You Don't Have To Be Lonely, You Know?

• Ashlee Leach, Grade 9
• Poetry
• 2016

I've lost the plot. I don't know what to say, do, think, hell even eat. I can't do anything. I've gone mad. Either that or I'm increasingly paranoid. I keep feeling there's something watching me with a compassionate gaze. And while it's comforting, it horrifies me.

It chases me through this ephemeral mist we call reality. Consciousness. Life. Whatever it is, I long ago lost my grasp of it. I think it horrifies me so much because it's just part of my fragmented imagination. It's not real. It's a lost thing. That in itself is horrifying. I'm too lonely to be alone any longer...but I've been alone so long I couldn't stand to be near anyone or anything for any amount of time. It's a depressing paradox.

Faces are passing shadows that hold no story, no imagination. Nothing by threat, primal fear and dust. Swirling, consuming, grim faces of dust. It clogs my every thought, every action is laboured and held back from fruition. I've lost it, I know. In fact, I lost the battle - I think - when I died. That cold emotionless glance down the shotgun and the fire of determination in my murderer's eyes killed me as surely as the bullet did.

What strikes me as absolutely hilarious about the whole thing though, is that even though we're taught that revenge is bad and that it doesn't help anyone, it helped me. Immensely so.

I'm not lonely anymore. And he will forever suffer.