Your hand around my wrist.

Loneliness is a teacher. That’s what “they” say
(Ffs it’s true though)
A long lost friend who knows all your secrets.
Who you would rather meet briefly,
And not have sleeping on your sofa for months...but,
I know being alone is a gift. Though,
I know how painful it can be.
I will be grateful of this pain in the future. I know
I know. All my accumulated pain will get me through this.
I think I side eyed this struggle, I anticipated it -
didn’t stare it full in the face. “I can take it”
“It will be hard of course but...” But...
This feels like the most excruciating thing I could ever experience.
Right now. It’s not. I know.
Sometimes you can feel both these things in the same day, the same moment even.
Somehow. Somehow that’s how it is. The gift and the suffering.
The things that tear you apart the most.
Give you the most...(do they?)
(Or is that just what you tell yourself out of habit, because you’ve grown up with that belief of it?)
Maybe if I close my eyes real tight...
it will all go away.
Loneliness pulsates through me.
In the middle of the night.
The emptiness breathes like a living thing.

It’s been a long time since I felt this alone.
So far removed from everything.
From you. My body is aching. For touch.
To have you wrapped around me.
This kind of alone is physical, it hurts
Every part of me is in pain.
In the middle of the nights when sleep eludes me,
I hold it in. As though to write it down
Will make it real. Will peel all my layers of armour away.
In the morning it will be okay.
Thank god, for this strength.
I tell myself.

That this isn’t a choice,
That it has no known end.
Changes the intricacies of how it sits inside me.
But only in a strange subtle way, I guess that’s the problem.
It’s so hauntingly familiar.
It’s almost like a recreation.
Like the scene of a crime,
picked up and played out under a different roof.
In different streets. It’s making me feel
Things I haven’t felt in so damn long.
What bubbles up to the surface turns my stomach.
This grief for the girl who knew these feelings
Before. That is the damage.
Ironic I guess, the damage is what will help me through this.
But I’m still crumbling tonight.
I sit in the darkness and it’s tangible around me,
Like heavy smoke.

I need you, I need your face before me.
Your hand around my wrist.
My fingers tracing scratches upon your skin.
Your voice in my ear.
But I can’t say it. I try to find the words,
That will not worry you. They don’t exist. But,
I know I can get through this. So,
I want to protect you from helplessness.

I long for something to dissolve all the uncertainty.
But it sits. It waits. It gets deeper.
“How long will it be?”
I say into the night.

And the night stays silent.