Yours Singularly – A Love Poem By Rachana

Want to listen to me read it? 

–

Always close by my side, he mocks me.
Calling the lack of endearment around me,
self-inflicted.
Late in the afternoon, at work,
“This team of people around you just need you to
break their bread”, he mulls.

At the bar,
he demands to know
why I hadn’t invited myself to her house.
“You could’ve shown her a good time?!”
I feel pity for him, I can see the mourning,
through his starry eyes.

As I walk to the package store,
I keep my head down
and make no eye contact.
Except with a week’s worth of beer and cigarettes.
“See, people only want your monies!”
This social prediction cements his convictions for me.

Out on my balcony,
I smoke small puffs of cold clouds,
as I see a fight unfold on the street in the moonlight.
“Do something,
all that heat in your muscles?
They have never seen passion nor crime”, he begs.

I slide the door quickly to keep him out.
But he has made it.
It’s deja vu,
when we both crash on the couch.
“Get a dog man, or a gerbil,
you’re killing me!”, he says.

Women have much use for them,
not me,
I bark at him.
I’ve got time to kill,
and that’s how the TV comes alive.
John Oliver’s out there to hang with.

Late in the night
the phone promises a revival,
“Go on Tinder,
Swipe to the right – Yeah, yeah yeah that one”,
He whispers into my tired eyes.
Huh, as if this is the happy ending?

I slither down on the couch ignoring him.
Before I can invade sleep,
he warns me, “You are ripening!”
In a matter of minutes, we both become one,
I am him, he is me.
Alone am I.

–

Today, an estimated 28% of all American homes are single-person households, according to a 2018 report from the US Census Bureau. Nearly 5% of the US population lives in retirement homes. More than 2 million Americans are incarcerated, according to a 2018 report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

–

Originally composed on: 7/10/2015, 2:10am

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Poetry