Do you ever get lonely? Awake at 1 am, hunched over a pillow, mewling to a dark room? Because for all the abundance, all that’s been, a whole summer yet to unfold, all the souls that settle so neatly next to yours, there is lack.
Is this hole in the roof where the moonlight gets in? The crack where religion slipped out, a quiet clearing where ancient spirits can rest? You wish it’s the place a soulmate might stake their claim, but perhaps this yawning cavity is the very well you must pour yourself into.
How do you pour yourself into loneliness? Is that even possible? Time hasn’t given you much to work with. You’ve tried a new tongue, an alphabet of trees; you’ve tried expensive purses and being poor; a prayer for the emptiness to make space for your true self to emerge.
Is she here, under a necklace shaped like the moon? Is she studying for six hours a day, writing words no one reads? Pressing kisses to mossy stone, picking insect wings off her damp lips? Is she bathing in phone glow at 2am, ignoring herself, reading books that don’t matter, telling false tales, collecting thorns, wishing secret selves into existence when the shuttered dark grows suffocating and dawn’s hands beat too early against the window?
Is she thirsty for summer’s rosy hot blood, leaving trails of withered cherry stalks and shrivelled tomato pips in her wake? Is she a non-writer, a camera roll of selfies? She could be waiting patiently, some way off in the future, or humming quietly to herself, a handsbreadth away. It seems like a cruel joke when you pour so much music and life and slick-palmed roadtrips through gloomy glens into the well and can’t even see your own reflection.
The land is riddled with hollows. Deep grooves scar the trees just as time presses, unsolicited, into your skin. The unknown appears around blind corners, water has hollow caverns to gush into. All things, pitted and pocked like peach stones. Even the moon has her craters. And you have this 1 am chasm, the deepest gorge in existence.
Can you live with loneliness, treating it like a round-bellied tick that guzzles off your fears for a few hours then rolls off into the grass, smacking its lips? Stop throwing sticks at loneliness for a second and sit beside it instead. This is the dark side of the glass, nocternity — a taste of nothing. All loneliness wants is company, a benevolent witness to notice what’s missing.
Reach for yourself in the darkness. Maybe, she’ll reach back…
Kate xx
This was so beautiful and haunting. This needs to be read out loud, I can’t wait until I’m alone later in the day so that I can do that. Thank you for sharing, I needed the magic of these words.
Funny, not funny. Lately I've also been dealing with loneliness even though it seems like I'm surrounded by people 24/7. Family, coworkers, etc. My escape is to spend time alone by the sea, at the marina on my sailboat. Maybe my lonely feelings are just my subconscious reminding me to get away and reconnect with my spirit and soul. Think I need the quietude to still all the voices competing for attention.