Making aloneness of loneliness

Arriving home

Deep reminders

Jasper greets me with excitement

Keeping his distance on the deck

Watching and waiting

Longing for food

I feel my heart fall for a moment

I remember how lonely afternoons felt

In childhood

Home alone

No container

Deep dive

Into empty space of absence

Being alone

Yet not alone

And reminders too

Of all those other Fridays

Heart empty and aching

I could only reach for anaesthetic

Fragments of today’s conversation with my niece

 So long estranged

Run through my mind

‘I only know how to be alone’

She said to me

Ancestral imprints deep

No self pity

Absence and longing for those

Who won’t return my call

Keeping their distance

I know why

There is nothing I can do

So slowly I ease into the evening

Tidying things away

Giving Jasper a pre dinner treat

Knowing that no matter how empty I feel

This moment

This very feeling

Is somehow a necessary experience

Full of deeper meaning

I can only welcome everything in

Then settle down

Feeling echo imprints of absence

Emptiness and pain

But knowing also

That as long as I am present

With an ope heart

For all these feelings

I am never truly alone

And that such presence

Makes aloneness

Of lonelieness