The Alone

One Room, four walls, two windows, one door and one bed.

The Alone

Minimal

Silent

To survive in The Alone acceptance is mandatory

No choice

Letting go

Floating, untethered

Existing in a void rather than a place

Dry and suffocating

The world gradually recedes

The Alone becomes comfortable

Necessity

Intermittent contact

Friends slip away

Family lives outside

The Alone

None can see or feel

The Alone

Real recedes

Everyone is beyond the wall

Mourn and accept

Always accept

Too many tears

Too many silent screams

Too much sobbing in the closet

The Bed is the companion, always there, always steady

The bed comforts and accepts

Doesn’t understand that it can’t replace The Human

Voice

Touch

Contact

Overwhelming

The moaning silence of the void swells

The tethers hold fast

The windows tempt and taunt

The Outside is not possible in The Alone

Inside looking out folds the body into a sore, intolerable nausea

Throat closes and chest tightens

Closing the blinds in The Alone blocks what might have been

The Door mocks the bed

The bed is too big to fit through the doorframe

The frame blocks emotion and feeling

Squeezing out self

Exhaustion and pain are the sentinels

Silence and tears the barbed wire of its fence

The walls are ever seeing, ever present

Their weight is oppressive and blank

They never recede

The Alone has walls of invisibility

Always there, always inanimate

Hard, uncaring and disinterested

Vacuous

Only there

Fear hides tucked away into the corners of the room

When ready its long tentacles slide unseen down the painted surfaces

Piercing the dull routine of The Alone it glides across the bed

Sucking out the spirit of the prey

Replacing it with the venomous ooze of dread

Paralysis sets in and fear annihilates

Nothingness looms

by Daphne

This poem was submitted as part of the Reflections of ME/CFS and FM and Long COVID Awareness Day Virtual Event on May 9th, 2023.

#MillionsMissing #MillionsMore #Hope4MECFS #Hope4FM #Hope4LongCOVID