My stamp collection

I woke up to the realisation, today, that I am crowded by people.
I know lots and lots of people, lots and lots of people know me too. Some of those people like me, a lot of them are related to me and there are more than I can count who hate me. All of that totals to knowing a lot of people.

Yet, I feel alone.

I don't feel the kind of alone that is tranquil; This is the kind of alone where you scream and nobody will hear you. Perhaps what I can finally see is that when scream nobody will care.

I used to know people who would talk to me and whom I could talk to. I collected confidences as a child collects stamps- some rare and exquisite, most simply to feel a purpose. I would meticulously collect them and file them away making contact to let their energies flow into me in my most private hours.

Over time have felt more lost and alone.
I wanted different things, I abandoned my once prized collection. I chased dreams that weren't mine to live. I return now to old friends and find my neglected collection a confusion. The sequences are lost and I open my book staring at strangers. I feel muted by the faces my mind's eye sees, I feel deaf and numb to the stories I once so meticulously laboured over. In panic I scream endlessly to be heard and yet, I see faces, once loved, drift by sporting masks of shock and annoyance, sometimes sympathy but never, anymore, of companionship.

It is lonely staring at an empty book once so full, so familiar.

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Listening (in my mind's ears) to Buckets of Rain- Bob Dylan