Loneliness has launched
at least as many ships as beauty.
 
You listen to pages age
rain text skylight
 
but can't hear yourself feel.
The dog sleeps, nothing moves
 
even imagination snoozes.
You sleep a week without sheets
 
your refrigerator empty
as a salesman's coffin.
 
Were you to speak aloud
paint would roll off walls
 
curtains burst into flame.
For isolatos everywhere--
 
the wilderness, the hole--
space shrinks, unfolds
 
fills solitude's vacancies
with blindness. Absence
 
opens a soup can of zeroes
tiptoes the very edge
 
of dissonance. The sirens
in your heart do not stop.
 
Some of us
don't belong anywhere.