He
is always there.
Not in a
hand holding,
eye smiling
type of way.  More like
a misleading shadow,
an unshakable ache.
He gets me when I am
weakest.
One tiny misstep and I lose my
balance
and he is there to push me
down
knowing full well that
no one
will help me up.

He slinks in on the blackest of
nights
like rejection.
Climbs through the locked window,
slips under my bed
like the invite that doesn't exist.
I toss and turn all night,
knowing he is there and knowing that he will
always
be there.

Ironically,
I see him most in rooms crowded with the color of
voices.
I try to open my mouth to speak but he fills it with
cotton
like a roll of the eyes.
So
I sit in my gray corner of silence
watching him from the corner of my vision.
He looms and lingers
like the empty chair at lunch that doesn't exist
and I am trapped tongue tied terrified.
Torrents of tears.

He knows the ones closest to me the best.
Better than I know them -
better than they know me.
He keeps me from them:
Christmas parties,
Sunday dinners,
“home,”
it's just me, myself and I.
He
gives them fire to fuel their disappointment.
And suddenly I am no longer
quiet
I am
unfriendly.
And suddenly I am no longer
shy
I am
antisocial.
I know it is he who gives them these words,
fills them with lies that I do
nothing
to counter.
Does that make them true?

He,
the Alone,
knows me better than most.
Than all.
I have gotten to know him, too.
He lashes out, fills my days with black,
but only because he, too, is
alone.
He hurts anyone who gets
too close
to him because he doesn't know how to be anything but
Alone.

It's okay, I understand, I've been there.
I am there.
Sometimes I lash out, too.