Morning Sun, Edward Hopper, 1952
Loneliness is the strangest of emotions,
longing to feel the warm, intimate touch of another and somehow terrified
to let anyone close enough to experience my pain,
as if my instability will flow like chilled water into their bones,
it perpetuates itself and perpetuates itself and perpetuates itself.
(It never occurs to me that this could be a two-way transfer,
perhaps their stability would flow into me like warm honey).
If only holding ourselves provided the same serotonin release as
being held by another. The warmth of otherness makes it special, I guess.
What are you thinking, oh, sweet woman, why do you look so scared?
This is my imminent fate, I suppose,
as the tightrope I walk which connects and has connected my future
to my present is growing ever thinner and ever shorter.
An upright fetal position on a bed that squeaks as I long to feel comfortable,
as I long to feel at home. I imagine I will stare out the window at my new life,
a wall of glass separating me, shielding me from the future.
When I have walked to the end of the tightrope, where else do I have to go?
I turn and see the cold, plaster wall with the weird clumpy specks in it
the blankness reminding me of my loneliness.
the sky the color of the tears I choke back and hold in my tiny body,
the sun high and warm and enhancing the melanin of those who brave the outdoors,
laughing and buzzing about three hundred feet down.
How did they do it, reaching the end of the tightrope and jumping,
never scared that they would hit the ground. Never scared that they wouldn’t fly.
I used to have dissociative issues, whenever the darkness came.
black dots appear on the edge of my vision and I observe
my body as an outsider. I am a foreigner to myself in the darkness.
my mother with honey colored hair and the clearest of all eyes
would make me take my clothes off and hold
myself. feel the flow of my blood, the coolness of the air as it entered
my nostrils and the warmth as it left, feel my arms and legs and the warmth
that said I was alive and remind myself that they were mine.
I am real. I am real. I am real.
Is this what you are doing, Oh sweet woman?
You are real because I see you.
You are real because I am you.