Panic strikes me
as I realize that
I'm alone

Alone for the first time--
and I don't know
what to do with myself

All these people
Insistent beeping, buzzing,
rolling, shutting

My collective mind
Unraveling
Before my eyes as I have
No one to talk to
to
Connect
with

Floundering
thumbing through
my contacts
to find someone

Anyone

To make me feel wanted,
to feel that my company,
even if through a phone,
is wanted, that I am
desirable

As I fold in on myelf
the Layers turning inward,
eating themselves--

The waitress leans down and asks:

Is everything okay?

I respond, muttering:

mmhm.

It's killing me from the outside in
you know...

But I don't say that

As the layers fold,
the only thing that remains
is a scared little girl
just as frightened as she was
the day she opened her eyes
underwater
and looked around
and realized how eerily
vast and deep the water was...

It still scares her.
It scares me.
And I realize
that the one thing
I can't stand more than
Anything
more than death itself:
is being alone.

Why?

Because when I am
alone with my thoughts
That vastness
that deep ocean of nothingness
bathed in a burning, purified chlorine
Haunts me

Because I cannot fill it,
not even with the deepest of thoughts,
the most vivid sentiments
Cannot satisfy the depths
of the reflective blue against
a slate of unfeeling cement