What if I want to be lonely?

That is a punishment waiting to happen. Lonely drags you to a demeanor that controls your output to others. Although you think they don't recognize the behavior, the tone of your voice tells

it all. To be alone because your day was chaotic and your night would be occupied from parenting, is one thing. A well deserved day alone at home is appreciated. But to just be lonely is a heart crying with every pulse. To be lonely is a tear lying behind your eyes awaiting its chance to fall on your clothing, just to wet up your appearance. To be lonely is a silence placed in your presence to not be touched until you cry that tear with a pulse from your heart to release the pain you are protecting.

No one wants to be lonely on purpose.

i stare into the white snow, the gray sleet and ice

the world moves along, but i stay frozen in paradise.

what if i want to be lonely instead?

what if i love the way solutitude drips down my forehead

you know head wounds always bleed too much

you know i shrink away from your touch

isn't it better alone in the cold?

where talking is poison and silence is gold?

i want to be a shade, my corporeal life passed

and i watch the people as they walk past

a ghost of solitude, reveling in silence

as i watch them, waves crash in my head, full of violence

i long for the touch i once scorned.

would i still be here if i had been warned?

why didn't anyone tell me how crushing it is?

why did i ever think i wanted this?

i no longer want to be lonely

if only i'd known, if only...

what if i want to be lonely?

what if this dark

loveless place

isn't a prison

but what

i've wanted all

along

if i did this to myself

and it's entirely

my fault

and i'm just in

denial

staring at the paintings

on the walls

colors and numbers

and strange alphabets

trying to find meaning

wanting to get out

yet i locked

myself in

and what if i want to be lonely?

what if beneath my cracking flesh

i am a fever pitch of radiation and ooze

burning the fingers that lay upon me,

no matter how gentle the touch.

what if i am volatile and caked in rust

vaccinate yourself against me

because i can coat the lungs

and i am just enough nicotine to ruin

every last stretching second of sobriety.

good god, what if you're wrong about me

what good am i to the love gifted freely

when the poison of my smile ruins it

indefinitely.

it would be better just to be lonely

and burn away whatever's left of me.

Fall days are what I remember from the past. The autumn leaves drifting down, apple orchards where I died a million times. New England is a room with the curtains drawn. No one comes out better for having survived the transition to winter.

My high school career was full of sickness. I was driven to appointments where I ticked off the appropriate boxes. The fall leaves stuck to my shoes, a reminder of the decaying of my mind. There is no happiness in making yourself small.

Freshman year of college came in the form of a windstorm I had opened my windows for. As I descended into the madness of an illness defined by starvation and hopelessness, I felt myself drifing away from the people I had already lost a long time ago.

Hope was my present tense and future tense. But in the autumn, the woods become starved of the company of leaves, and I too fell into the abyss of loneliness. Do the trees know they will once again be reborn again in the spring? It seemed far away, like Portugal, or mental stability.

Loneliness is not something to crave. It is dining halls where you eat alone, in the moments I waited between weighing myself, and in the moments I could feel myself leaving my body in conversations, I did not crave distance from others. Instead, I craved touch, a hug, a reason to stay in school. My college career was over after one semester of trying, and it ended with one email to administration in a cafe I loved, where I hated myself.

We all crave the companionship of others. In these trying times, the new normal is to be embraced, like accepting that winter is coming and the future is a chilly drive into the frosted unknown. We will hurt for it, but perhaps it is a reminder that we are meant to be together, autumn leaves like so many decaying promises of what's next to come.

addicted

loneliness your drug of choice

punishing yourself with consistent loss

she would have stayed

her light a radiant beam

although alone is appealing when

pitch black empty rooms have always been more your scene

People have not ceased to be with me,

Since that tragic day.

They say it's to keep me company,

And they try to get me to stay.

The only problem is that I

Don't want to be around.

Is it wrong for me to want to sit

With silence as a sound?

Because when I'm alone,

I feel his presence near.

Maybe I'm crazy for thinking this,

But it makes being alone nothing to fear.

So when you try to cheer me

By staying by my side,

The sadness only grows

Because that's when he hides.

Do not be offended if I

Don't want to go out.

Just know that I'm smiling

Because he is about.

I'm tired of the talking

I'm tired of the fun.

I just want to stay home.

With me, and no one.

I want to hear the silence.

I want to be alone.

Because when he appears,

I finally feel at home.

House

Home, this home reminded me of you. He's always open, but not for me.

Picking up keys to a rusty door, they get stuck or break.

It is always dark in the house, and only in the corners does light penetrate through small cracks.

It is negligible, unable to illuminate space.

The first time I saw it, I wanted to stay in it.

Today it is empty and needs renovation.

I sometimes come because of an impudent habit, he also stands.

He waits and believes that someone will come in with open rusty doors.

Having picked up the keys if he can.