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