Solitude

a poem by Roger B Rueda

I am and no-one else in my world, I know.
Is it blight? That one
that lies in wait within?
Unrelenting souls
who cross and now and again
sway my life as I speak to,
I am and no-one else.
I have been, from my dawn till these days
(possibly to the moment I breathe my last),
inimitably alone.
I see the world, in my imaginings,
secrets, optimisms.
I make my mind up
what part of that lost world
to let slip to others,
trying to fit in what’s to their liking.
The seconds before I drift off I am alone
no matter who is stretching out beside me
to say good night and what part
of my world he has witnessed.
In the stillness, I am there on my own
with the only being I really
am familiar with: myself.
Solitude is what I try to take in hand,
I don’t think.
It’s not a prickle, or grief.
It comes about even
once I’m midway of a multitude.
It’s in me. Is it that I have nobody
to talk to?
Perhaps. Or that not a soul can
empathise with me the way
I feel for myself?
And that’s just the way it is,
I find it great
to know that in me there is
a world ajar only for me,
which only I’m familiar with.
Each solitary person about me
has his own world and though
it may be
the nearly far-fetched place,
he feels lonesome, for he can’t give
anyone an idea about it lock, stock and barrel.