Have you ever felt

loneliness, really felt it,

like a hollow tube in

the centre of your being?

 

Here-now, and apart,

existing but unconnected,

and hearing the sounds of

your voice coming back

to you in a reverb of pain.

 

Have you ever lived in the

singular, alone, attending to

yourself-unto-death, with

the days not broken by the

tender touch of another body that

makes your singular a hopeful we?

 

This is loneliness: an invisible state

of being existing in silent clean houses

and dirty street corners with eyes peering

up for something no one can actually give,

and in hospitals and homes where loneliness

dissolves the soul in the acid of disconnectedness.

 

This is loneliness that creeps in stealth beneath

your door to inhabit human spaces where smiling

people are placed neatly together but feel alone.

 

This is the curse of the modern world of things

and the bitter promise hollowed out in thinking

we are so advanced but realising we are dead.

 

5/8/2022