when you tell me I'm in love with all our friends
I know it's a joke and I laugh along, but really, it's true.
I can't help but love so many
five
ten
twelve faces
Girls are so beautiful and boys are so beautiful and all others are so beautiful
I don't love you any less, I don't love them any more, but sometimes it overflows, dripping down the sides of my form
cutting through negative space
I have always been the one to sit in the attic, always been the one to savour the cold, always been used to metallic rattles and the feeling of coughing once more before I can pull away from from the back of my throat
and sometimes when I'm surrounded
by beautiful people and their conditioner words,
it just glows

I always thought I knew lonely,
Like I knew her sinful curves and crushing caress.
But if there is something this year has taught me,
This year of new, and discovery, and sweet sadness,
It's that I never knew lonely.
She and I had merely danced together at a ball,
Or shared a joke at a bar.
Lonely and I were but aquintances,
Passing strangers in the street.

I know now that lonely is like an expectant lover.
She is omnipresent,
She is always there reminding you that they are out there,
While you are in here alone.
Lonely doesn't possess curves,
Nor do her gnarled hand caress,
She is ugly and suffocating,
She is ever-present,
Reminding you,
That they are still out there,
Without you.