This is a poem I wrote one night while on tour in Chicago. I was trying to figure out if I was feeling lonely or if I was feeling sorry for myself. After a conversation about this I realised how reluctant I was to allow myself to feel lonely so I just let it be and wrote this.
(Excuse the sound of the waitress walking around the room collecting empty glasses off the tables)
Do not ask me if I'm lonely,
I will not know how to answer.
Mum says I came out her womb,
screaming like I was wounded
until I was put in her arms.
Do not ask me if I'm lonely.
Writers talk about owning their own loneliness,
but I think its just something they say to the walls.
I get mad at time, at times
because it can't give me any more of my childhood.
At times,
all I can taste are the spaces
sore between my broken teeth,
at times,
I see old lovers under falling snow
in yellow summer dresses,
looking like a warm place to escape to.
Grandma says
its amazing what we keep in our brains,
some we want, some we don't want.
This is the darkest place inside me,
I walk in, turn on the night and watch what disappears,
do not ask me if I'm lonely.
I do not know if loneliness is an injury.
I was afraid to learn this poem by heart
because of what it might do to my heart.
I sit with my loneliness and we both agree,
we like each others company,
but only when we know what to do,
with each other.
