I sit on yellow sand
and look across the purple sea
and watch a mute dance across the electric boardwalk.
We don't yell out to each other.
We don't cry for help or build a raft to find one another.
She is fine with her seagulls and I am fine alone.
Alone. Am I fine alone?
I like to think I am but the tide of
sadness creeps up as five o'clock draws near
and everyone else is fine.

That's how it is here.
Everyone else is fine.
You walk and you breath and you keep your head down
and no one asks if you're okay
because no one knows what it looks like when you're happy.
You eat alone and the empty chairs bring comfort.
You think about the colors changing on the mountains-
burnt orange, crimson red, baked yellow-
but you keep your romanticizing inside your head
because no one cares enough to listen.

You see someone one night, and they seem to care
but amnesia befalls them in the morning.
Glowing faces lit by electric tea lights
run by batteries and false hope.
A nose in a book never felt so wrong
and its hard to remember that
not even the clouds like to rain when the sun is looking.

One always misses neighbors and old people and babies in pews.
Or houses made into restaurants made into sanctuaries,
where jacked drinks are good and the service is bad.
One always misses going to the kitchen for a snack at midnight and running into your best friend that knows you because she gave you life.
Or spending Saturdays in the cool basement with the man that taught you all you know.
One always misses walking the streets without the fear of getting lost
or naming each house by the memory that comes with it.
One always misses when home meant family or when school meant people you knew by personality:
The hobbit that bled out equations, The girl next door and her nurture, The other half that is an art form in herself, the girl with hair like fire and humor like a drum beat, The Englishwoman from France that understood the ebbs and flows of life and always saw you better than you were, and mostly The boy up the street that makes you laugh and forget what you should probably remember.
One always misses having people that care.

So I sit here and write
and my name is one,
but I am not one at this moment; I am a million;
and nostalgia is a disease.