Alone and melancholy is an adequate beginning to a poem. A solid start.
I am alone.
Alone, that is, except for the pair of pouncing cats hunting imaginary mice at my feet. Alone, except for the harmony of phrases and tangled images skittering through my mind like paper dancers caught by the breeze.
In truth, I am never alone.
I am not alone.
Did I say I was melancholy? That too is a lie. I am too distracted tonight to rise to the depth of such sweet despondency. The whispering moon has caught my attention so morbid curiosity is the best I can do. Perhaps even morbid is too strong of an emotion.
I am curious.
Curious that I cannot muster enough angst to pen the lines of a proper poem worthy of a Shelly or Byron. I am too content is seems, surrounded by playful cats under the light of a waning moon.
I long to be alone and drink deeply
from the cup of wretched solitude
but I am denied tonight,
for the moonlight casts shadows
the cats cannot ignore
and I suppress a smile instead of tears.
You are gone and I yearn to grasp
the emotion of separateness,
but the text you sent midday warms me.
I feel your presence—
my invisible dance partner,
and my heart pirouettes on cue.
I search again for silence or grief
some tang of sadness perhaps,
but love is too sturdy a construct
and I’m maddeningly content with certainty
that I will never be alone—
even for this poem’s sake.
.