Shedding The Cloak Of Loneliness

For a dip in the breezy hot blue

Breezy hot sunshine flickers on the perimeter of an outdoor dining island, as shadows drift by my socially distanced table, with neighboring wisps of conversation.

Clouded faces float in another world that circles mine, strangers sharing stories in the company of others, shielded by a fortress of chairs behind a dark wall of indifference.

Though a distance apart, we’re proximally together, serving life sentences. All prisoners of time, spending seconds in repentance while planning our escape.

As I wait in limbo between rides, a downsizing dilemma of a one-car family house, I try to find purpose in the twilight years of life that leaves the familiar behind. 19 years ingrained in the walls of a house abandoned for future destinations.

I tread ahead with caution afraid of what lingers in the shadows: elderly parents dying from boredom, their time credits dwindling under a moonlit sky.

We wait, always wait.

Whether floating on an outdoor dining island, or sinking in a deep-seated couch, we cling to what we know while time circles the clock, an endless tick-tock of flawed human thinking.

Am I alone or lonely?

Loneliness is a subjective state of remorse when Hope declines an invitation. Unless it was lost in the mail, a more likely explanation.

We are captives of preordained thinking from which we can only escape by relinquishing guilty expenditures

in relished moments of solitude, we can forgo the woeful victim trap by embracing the wait with observational bliss, and shedding the cloak of loneliness for a dip in the breezy hot blue.

© Lauren Salkin 2021