chinese water torture

i once read something about prisoners that went insane

from a special kind of torture, where a single drop of water

was dropped onto their faces over and over and over. i

tried to imagine how in the world it could be

torture, something so painless and harmless. but

the rhythm of the water dropping was irregular, meaning

the victim couldn't anticipate the timing of the next drop.

and when water, second by second, time after time,

drips onto solid rock, it forms a

deeply scraped hollow.

no one told me that loneliness would be so loud.

that it would howl and tear at me like hurricane wind,

strong and wet with tears

and the noise is shattering, it means hiding

for cover until this is all over

i thought being lonely meant quiet, meant

hearing the silence of empty space

now i realize that it is a hunger, empty

in a painful reminding way

i am not lonely for just the people i had

their voices and the way i knew them

i am lonely for myself, the person i was

when i was with them, my voice, my thoughts,

the way i knew myself

i am getting older alone

and it feels so cold

it feels like being the person left behind

when everyone leaves and grows

in my mind there are words i dont say

and feelings i am unable to feel, being lonely

is one that my body wouldn't welcome and yet

somehow here i am starving for something i

never knew i wanted and still refuse to admit i

need. i am alway left wondering if i deserve it

after all, for being so cold and locked up

there must be something i did because i

am hiding my pain from myself and it spills out

my pores and i'll never have enough pots and pans

to catch it all before it's too late and everyone sees.

hide me from the world, hide me from my own eyes

but give me one person who looks at my burning pile

and sees a life. Will there be someone that looks at the

lines in my hands and speaks my body's language?

because no one does, no one. and it makes me feel

unhuman. i starve for understanding. can someone

look me in the eyes and hold my secrets and know my name?

its cold and lonely where i am, with water digging into my

skull in a way that could be beautiful to anyone else. could that

be how the grandcanyon was smoothed over or the little star shaped

grains of sand? what if they cry out in pain, but all that everyone else

sees is beauty? and the same way the stars burn and rot and rip

themselves to shreds, we call them small and beautiful and dreamy.

so here i am starving and lying about how much i hurt

because maybe its better to pretend it is

beautiful maybe that is

what everything does on this dead dying dirt. i am

drowning and thirsting and starving and bursting

and the poetic nature is pain. i can't sleep with all these

words crowded in my head- all my own- but where they come

from i'll never know. i've been alone long enough to hear voices

that come from the ground and the sky and

it might sound silly but they are there and i'm

not crazy, they're just as lonely as i.

and it suddenly occurred to me, we persons are built

with a rhythm. a heart pumping life force in/out/in/out

yours is so unlike any other. millions of little beats pulsing evenly

on a rhyhmically spinning planet. an even beat in wake or sleep,

we never live a moment without rhythm. and so it makes

sense to me how irregular drops of innocent water

could rip a man's sanity to shreds when his being relies

on a ticking clock, something to hear and know is true.

he hears the water is poisonous. he hears the drips uneven.

his brain believes he's poisoned. his heart believes it skips

every beat. he dies of poison, he dies of heart attack. i am lonely

and my body finally heard the news. it finally realized all

the thoughts in my head echo to myself, there is no one

else on this blue empty planet, me and my thoughts and my

uneven heartbeat. and now, the loneliness

aches like a deeply scraped hollow