I’m sat in the chair I was earlier,
But this time I’m alone.
Paired off voices buzz around my paired off ears,
But my solo mouth remains sealed,
A longing to be opened
By an unseen parted care.
A warmth streams down to a silently well fed,
A fullness that does not sit quietly.
The screams echo in my hollow,
Lips unmatched only to consume.
Star lit lights cut through the emptiness,
Caressing those who care to notice.
I have heard of the aching
And the vastness of an empty table
But I never thought I would be emptier,
Cleared of everything and polished of personality.
I sit emanating a desperate,
I am more than the clothes I wear
Than the unreal piercing stroking facial edifices
Because an identity is not attractive,
My oversized top unattractive
To those others wish I’d attract.
An oil painting of perfection,
Painted until the layers crack
And the awful, undesirable leaks
Onto page and place and people,
I AM.
And here even that is not enough
Sideways stares and judging murmurs.
‘I am’ is not enough.
Where is the ‘we are’
and the ‘you should’
And the ‘you just need?
Where can you make believe
And know your happy ever after
Is speeding towards you on horseback?
But here
No
Here emotional barrenness reigns and a
Strange need for us to be we cuts the us into no one
Until that no one’s gone.
Unseen, in a chair, in a crowded bar.
Lily Portman 