You find yourself alone
Maybe for the first time
Maybe you bump into loneliness like you would an old classmate at the grocery store
Maybe its the same as hearing a song on the radio that your mother used to sing to you before bed
New, yet familiar
Perhaps you were deserted by the one person you needed the most
Perhaps your love affair became a crime scene
Perhaps you are just now realizing that your rough edges do not, and never have, fit into the puzzle of this life
Either way, the weight of the thick fog of isolation is not leaving your chest

You have spent time in grey
In beige
In mundane
In stoic
In complacent.
You are familiar with apathy as if it were swimming in your own blood stream.
Not so much soulful, just soulless.
Waking up every morning to the promise of an entire world,
But even that couldn’t get you out of bed.

You do not feel poetic
You have no desire to create music
Nor writing
Nor art of any kind
You wish to simply sit very still
Until the lines of distinction between you and the rest of the world fade away
And you can dissolve into your background

Although you are eager to dispel this disease of desolation,
You must resist that urge to vanish
You have just been given the gift of solitude
And although you may feel like you have been vexed
Do not be mistaken!
There is no greater freedom than to be undefined

Learn to love the full tone of silence
Talk to yourself in the language you knew even before birth
-And then listen
You will unfold
Blossom
You will be created



Realize that your worth does not diminish when you are alone
You are no less intelligent
Or witty
Or beautiful
When there aren’t eyes or ears to witness you

If you begin to miss the danger of loving someone
Put your fingers to your neck and realize you have the power to stop your own breath
Put your fingers to your heart and realize that you are now inches away from the only thing keeping you alive
Realize, that that is pretty much the same as loving someone.

Learn to open yourself up
You are guts and bone and veins and they are not beige.
Learn to stand on your head
And as the earth becomes heavenly and the heavens keep you grounded,
See that you are not static

Dig inside yourself and removed the rotting routine with your own two hands
Let it get stuck under your nails,
Make a nest in the creases of your knuckles
Look down and see
A map of apologetic survival
A map of quiet desperation
A map of a place you never want to see again
And then don’t see it
Ever ever again