The lonely form crowds on the street. They collect at the corners, letting the whole world drown in their silence. They are a flashmob without the flash, and a mob that mobs no-one. Each of them is you, a someone you used to be, and therefore each of them is no-one. No-one did this, the blind Cyclops says; and this many no-ones have accusation enough to blind the sky.
These people have nobody and, so, slip through the cracks to end up collected at the edges of the drains. Corrugating in lines that jag up and down like the teeth of a zipper: swarming, dispersing, only to form again.  Chastised by the wind, like so much chaff; chaste and uncherished in mute inevitability.

These people have done are nothing and, so, ask you what you have done for them. What crime is it that they are thinking of? Each time that a shudder of revulsion at this injustice passes through the throng it bangs louder in your memory.

Who have you forgotten?

I like the smell of smoke that lingers in my hair after dark. I like walking alone at night, past rows of flickering streetlamps, the illuminated windows and sounds of people. I like loud music, heavy bass and the sweaty press of bodies in a club so crowded you can’t hear yourself think. Breathe in deep the liminality.

I like sunshine, sitting backlit so warm your hair burns with heat. I like soft and warm things. Running my fingers through the fur of a cat asleep atop piles of unfinished work at 3am. The solid weight of an arm slung across a back. I like the feeling of incandescent joy that bubbles up from a place of deep security.

I dream of open floor plans and French windows. Staircase railings corrugating slow; slippery floorboards and cabinets silver-stained.
Rooms filled with nothing but light. Secretly, ashamedly, I dream of finding love – a love so transformative that I too become someone worthy. I dream of finding surety, planting my feet into the earth so deep that nothing can falter me. I dream of freedom and the sky.
I dream of finding words so perfectly balanced they drop as keys of a piano. Watch how they bloom like the first crocus of the spring. 
Tiptoed upon the surface of a lake, I slip in and make no sound.