Loneliness

It opened in my chest like an umbrella, overcrowding all the intimacies I’ve arranged with family and friends in the past few months. That hint of a shared smile, a shared secret from long ago, when it was just us and the kids. Our future dreams still intact, the past as graceful and placid as it used to be, the emptiness of the present forgotten for a moment, a split second. How familiar that smile was, how powerful to have opened the umbrella, like a peacock’s tail - beautiful and stifling in my face – darkening the light inside. Protecting me as an umbrella should? No. Blocking me. Me. Heavy and open and dark. Now a recluse, if only for a few hours, but alone nonetheless. Alone and wanting, forgetting the injustices, blinding my eyes from the facts and factors of what happened, what is happening, what will continue to happen. Recognition of a shared love for our children the only string binding us now. The vows meant nothing. The promises in front of friends, family, God meant nothing! Yet loneliness haunts me like a demon, foraging my successes and wants and achievements of all these long months. The umbrella shall fall in time – it shall fall and close upon itself and open me up once again to the truth. But for now, the demon caresses it, and the isolation from missing what I supposed to be true leaves me desperate, lonesome and alone.