AGAIN

TheFeatheredSleep


Sadness should never be more familiar than peace

Yet some days it is as if

Snow felted the house with only one emotion

And try as you might, the loneliness of your life envelopes

I have never found a remedy for that blue note

Striving to exorcise an unsettled icing of grief

Telling myself this too will pass

Somehow strikes false

For isolation

Looking out at the great cleave of land

Stretching as far as the eye can make out

One can say does not have to be sad

Yet if the majority of days you wake in silence

Wondering how you missed the full house

What happened to cast your dice alone?

Where from your earliest memory you shared space with emptiness

You may look at others with full lives and wonder how 

But it is a language you never learned

The discipline of togetherness or choice to be apart

Decisions made almost before birth

I carry the blood of reluctant loners

Speak the language of the professionally peripheral

None of us learned the art of heaving dinner tables or celebration

We learned to be alone from before we had known

I tried to break the Fates

Only ending further away

Now I live in a country without kin

A city without familiars

I can see myself, each year a little older 

More pinched than before, a flower dried and pressed

Flattened in her self capture

I want, I long, I desire so much 

To be known, to be among

Yet I end back here behind glass, an exhibit of one

Lost for fix, it seems, fate has her fun 

Childless, empied of possibility I feel like everything came undone

And I rolled like tumbleweed

And I gathered speed

Afraid of my life like 

Being made aware you were mad all along and everything you believed and clung on to

Was false

It is hard to be okay many times

That cold fear claims me, whispers, you are alone

The child within quakes to believe

She is still afraid of monsters

But the adult 

She no longer feels that is the worst outcome

For her, the idea of being alone

The last one

And no one notices those who are invisible

Yet still they live

As empty as a corn field

After they burn away the last dried husks 

A scorched Earth, flat and still

Enduring the ache 

Once, twice and again

48 thoughts on “AGAIN”

  1. A raw one. Nicely written. You are on my heart heavy I am praying for you and will email you today. But, I am so proud of you for being the strong person you are. Keep your faith and know you are not alone you are loved. Love you candy girl

  2. Oh my this is something that expresses so much I have felt and feel also. I understand at a deep level all of those thoughts and feelings. Its a strange thing how the voices of the world that tell us if only we do this or that we cam escape these kinds of feelings and try to force us to deny the deep loneliness of a disconnected family. I dreamed once of my own past as a house covered in ice and snow where I lived alone with cold people who were absent. In the dream only my Godfather validated me and gave warmth and that was so true in life and soon after he died.

    My heart is with you. Know you are not alone (although you are at a soul level as we all are when away from connections that tether us to life). Your amazing poetry comes out of this deep well. It may be a sad consolation, I am not sure, but your heart is heard and you are cared for by so many.

    Love Deborah

  4. THIS. So many stunning lines I can’t choose my favourite, I’d just quote the whole thing. Thank you for writing today what I cannot. This evokes a romantic type of melancholy that I almost don’t want to shake off. You never fail to amaze me! xx

  6. I’d like to be able to say that while there is someone who cares, you are never really alone. But I don’t believe it. In the end, no one, however close, can share the pain and make it less. We have to bear all our anguish and fears alone because we are individual, complex and unique. But when you’re ready to smile again, there will be people to smile with you.

  7. I understand you, here, in these words, in completeness. I understand the loneliness. That even though you are not alone. That even though people who count you a friend, rush with words to your side, it is not the same as the quiet hush of sharing a room, a physical moment. I understand. And wish it were otherwise, and that distance were not so mean a villain. *hugs* my friend.

  16. Familiar, this wall has my headprint! 😉

    I go to the coffee shop on Friday and Saturday mornings to do my map work, to be with people. The energy helps! This world is so busy.

    I wish I could give you the best advice! …it’s alright…

  18. As always your words seem to frame my life. I am sitting here trying to remember when I learned to be alone, I cannot remember back that far. I have always felt comfortable in my own head and I guess that is ok.
    Love this one.

  19. Reading this, it’s as if the pain broke away and redefined itself in order to turn into art that is relatable, strong, succinct, and poetically sound.

    “I carry the blood of reluctant loners

    Speak the language of the professionally peripheral

    None of us learned the art of heaving dinner tables or celebration

    We learned to be alone from before we had known

    I tried to break the Fates

    Only ending further away

    Now I live in a country without kin

    A city without familiars

    I can see myself, each year a little older

    More pinched than before, a flower dried and pressed”

    And the end lines seal it to perfection.

  24. ‘I carry the blood of reluctant loners.’ Been there, and some days I’m still there. We are never alone in these things, we just don’t seem to find each other. I love the melancholy mood this sets, but keep fighting.

  25. Believe it or not, and I may be the exception, but I have a husband of 54 years and a daughter and grandchildren and yet there are now and have been times when I have felt terribly alone almost as if I perished there would be barely a ripple in the lives around me. Essentially we come into this world utterly alone and will exit at some point in time utterly alone again. But we really must not dismiss the impact we have on the people who travel in and out and along our journey here. If we make even one solitary life better, then all was not wasted or lost for that one will take what we imparted to someone else or maybe several some one else’s and on and on it goes. You impact peoples lives every time you write and you are loved and adored. I know because I often read the comments of others and I adore you myself. Maybe we are there in our physical bodies, but I know that there are those who think of you and about you and hold you in high esteem. So perhaps the goad should be to accept what is or is not, learn to embrace the enoughness of our lives for they are far better than so many, and not worry about what happens at the end. My life could have ended 5 years ago and there was no warning, no last minute changes to be made. I so wish we lived closer though for I would not be a stranger at your door. Je t’aime, Natalie 🙂 ❤ xoxoxoxo

  27. This poem has a sad familiarity. You have such an amazing way of expressing feelings that are indescribable. This kind of loneliness… so empty and heavy at the same time. I hear you love ❤

  32. Pathos personified. I sit here feeling indulgent for there are times when I yearn to be alone. For me it is a luxury I relish when it comes along. And yet, I do understand the loneliness. Like Natalie says, it is possible to feel lonely in a crowd.

  41. This poem is so profound, like most of what I’ve read from you. I kept it open for a while because I didn’t have time to sit and enjoy it properly when I first opened it, and after reading the first few lines, I knew that it would take me down a road that I had to have time to savour/process.

    Like others here, I’m more of the extrovert type, yet I’ve also known loneliness, most often when surrounded by people who did not understand me or did not care to understand me.
    Many times I’ve felt alone in a houseful of people. I felt insignificant.
    And then, when finally I got to be by myself for a few days at a time, it was a mixture of relief (to finally be alone with myself, be able to focus on myself) and deep yearning (missing the liveliness around me).
    I have never experienced it the way you describe it.
    You have a wonderful way with words, this is a work of art!
    Thank you for sharing your gift with us.
    XO

  44. Poignant immediate real. And necessary. Would you truly choose not to be alone? I think so much of the, like, urgency of this would evaporate, drying in the early light of inclusion. Acceptance.
    Whatever the case, I dig this.

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