Member-only story
Loneliness
A free verse poem
Loneliness is a parasite that seeps into your skin.
By the time you’ve realized it’s there, it’s already pulled you down.
Feeding off of you and it won’t stop until there’s no light left.
To you, I’ve made myself vulnerable. I wanted to be known, be understood. Being met with silence felt like my body being pulled in multiple directions, pulling until it snaps.
I was trying to say how I felt in the moment, how loneliness can eat away at you until there’s nothing left.
It’s ravenous and tortuous and digs its claws into your skin.
I didn’t need you to fix anything, I just needed to know that you were there. My hands extended, graze the air and there’s nothing to hold on to.
You’ve eased out of my life like the passing summer day.
It was slow and methodical and I can feel your distance on my skin.
You treated my insecurities like they’d infect you too. Like I myself am the disease and I’d bring you down with me.
As if I’m cursed or broken.
The sadness, a weight on my body, starts to feel like a lover’s embrace. Holding me in a place of comfort and it’s been so long that I don’t know what it’s like without them.
What it’s like without the shadows.
