Shanta Acharya
Loneliness
Sore red, splayed silently in pain, the dappled sky,
a woman bleeding, giving birth, dying,
sacrificing her body in the cycle of creation.
Loneliness is a mother holding her son crucified.
It is that lying awake at 4am feeling,
anaesthetized by the faces of dead children.
Irma, Alice, Shanti, Xian...
The names and faces scroll on from all over the world.
Loneliness is coming home to an empty pram filled with toys,
but none there to shake the rattle and make a noise.
Loneliness is when your young wife dies in childbirth.
Loneliness stalks everywhere, like air;
even in the core of deepest love, it is there.
Loneliness has been experienced at the height of ecstasy.
It is our saviour, so make friends with loneliness.
It is the human condition, a vocation;
passed on from generation to generation.
In it you can experience the road not taken;
or the loneliness of a musical instrument untouched,
not breathed into, not played by passionate human
hands. Loneliness is banished, temporarily,
when two people come together in love.
Loneliness is when you have no one to love.
Discover in loneliness the continents of your self;
it is a secure place to wander in for nobody can trespass
unless you let them in. It is an island of freedom and peace.
Page(s) 75
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