Loneliness In Three Parts

By Maya Afonso

Loneliness is not the bitter feeling you expect. Loneliness is more hollow; it’s empty space inviting echoes, it’s the force that drives me seeping out like a wine bottle missing a stopper. And yet, I don’t do anything about it. I can’t do anything about it. It has its own bitter irony, wine.

I wonder, if I was not bound by the rules of convention would I have drunk myself dry already? Would my throat be hoarse as it spoke familiar degrading words at the mirror while the moon slept soundly? Would my laughter, instead of hiding behind a facade show itself to be mocking and dying? Would intoxication force my inhibitions into the open? My raw unguarded self at the hands of the world that cannot possibly be crueller to me than myself?

It's, it’s… preparing myself for the world, the world that is cruel… the me that is crueller…my delusions that are kind. This, this is easy. Death is easy but it hurts those you hold close. And sleep, so similar to death.. sleep is hard, but it doesn’t hurt those close to you. In exchange it hurts you, when you think you’ve escaped only to be right back where you started, only to have to live. To stare at the wine bottle open on the ground and the broken glass embedded in the cuts that litter your body.

By Maya Afonso