Some kinds of loneliness don’t scream.
they stand barefoot in the kitchen,
wash a single plate with two hands,
leave the radio off
because they know
how much it hurts
to be interrupted mid-memory.
They don’t ask why no one calls-
they are the reason
you stopped answering.
They fold your grief into drawers
like linens:
creased, clean, almost soft again.
You sit beside them
like they are a friend
you don’t remember inviting,
but you still pour them tea.
I get lonely
like a half-charged phone-
lit,
but only out of obligation.
functional,
but uninterested in service.
Sometimes I miss kissing.
Mostly I miss being known
without needing to explain
how I got this quiet.
I miss being held
like a sentence worth finishing-
but not enough to let someone
mispronounce my softness
and call it intimacy.
But this isn’t about the loneliness.
This is about the space I keep empty
because I know what full can feel like.
And full-
real full-
doesn’t require
that I collapse myself
into someone else’s unfinished business.
I am not afraid of love.
I am afraid of its understudies.
I do not want to bleed
on someone’s thrifted sheets
next to a cat that’s “technically not theirs,”
while an ex’s toothbrush stares at me from the bathroom
like I’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to me.
I am not withholding.
I am an altar
not everyone gets to worship at.
I am not waiting.
If someone comes again,
let it be without conquest.
Let them arrive barefoot.
Not because they have nowhere else to go,
but because they know
how to treat stillness
like sacred ground.
Let them sit beside me,
not to fill the silence,
but to hear what it’s been saying
all along.