Loneliness Begins

 Loneliness Begins

(“We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, sure and steadfast, which reaches inside behind the curtain.” Hebrews 6:19)

Loneliness begins like bees in your head
while you long for one friendly word
to mute their buzzing. The longer the day,
the more the noise, and the sickness grows to
an ache that weighs

Like lead in your chest. You would fall over with
the sickness, faint front first, if not for the last time
you broke your nose that way. A phone call would
be the alchemy that turned the weight around. And then,
into the night the illness fills
your legs’ hollowed

Bones. And now standing has locked the door behind itself.
The couch does not speak, but it knows your form. You beg
for sleep, and when you waken, you beg for sleep again,

Except your dreams leave you feeling you’ll never please those
half a dozen friends that haunt you nights. And then you
beg in postcards, texts, emails and anonymous social posts,
for one who used to hear your words
and sing them back to you

To return and heal this sickness before the bees’ stings
remind you that you caught your loneliness

From failing far too often.

Today I wait for one, maybe two, who know me
in, out, through, trash, and unholy scan
and simply want to keep me company, dry
my tears,
and remind me they have anchored me (sickened
by the sea) and that
I sometimes was less than lonesome,
and often more than dead.