Tuesday, March 5, 2019

The Lament of the Drowning (poem)

The bright florescents burned
and the room was cold and noisy,
but it was better than isolation.
Home was a one-bedroom apartment
overlooking a university town's center.
Home was loneliness in a crowd,
watching all but invisible to most.
What else could I do but hide in public?

I searched for solace in strangers,
in all the possibilities that lay between us,
but the distance was insurmountable,
and it came to torture me.
With every wonderful night I had,
the thought of its impermanence crushed me:
every good thing was a sandcastle
and the tide was always rising.

Adrift in a murky sea of my dreams,
nothing but the infinite all around me,
I struggled to stay afloat, to hold on,
searching desperately for land to save me.
An island was all I needed,
a mass of reality among the fantasies,
maybe just a sudden kiss in a dark room,
but enough to keep me from drowning.

-Zero

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