They cleaned your upper lip

Cleared your mouth of blood

Checked your teeth

Dried blood spewing from your nose

Wrapped your ankle

Doused your knees with antiseptic and bandaged

They calmed

Nothing in you would calm though

You never thought you’d be in an ambulance

Whisked away on the street

Broken, alone, wondering how you got to be here

Alone, it’s the aloneness, not the wounds that hurt

Because aloneness is different from solitude

You know solitude, but aloneness

Aches within you, deep, it hurts your bones

More than cuts or sprains or breaks

You can amass a fortune, but alone

What does it mean?

You’ve collected solitude, a badge of introverts

Watching birds and squirrels and deer and butterflies.

You befriend scared dogs and make cats twirl around your legs

But one morning you decay

Moments before you felt loved until betrayal

Spun you around to self-destruction, unintentionally

But moments of intense debilitating weakness

Lend themselves to moments of instilled strength

Engendering more strength that teaches you

That you can make all of your choices

And you can choose moments of solitude

And you can choose people who do not make you feel alone.

For you, and you alone, are your strength.

 

end

Sascha Darlington