Draft: Sips of Solitude

Draft: Sips of Solitude


I decided to live in an empty room.

A room that continues to shrink
in size. I can touch

all four walls while in
my bed and almost fall out of a window
that can only be opened from outside.

There is a half-drunk glass
of water I refuse
to finish

because I'm petrified to look
at the bottom where drips
of my future might reside.

I walk in a tank top tip-toeing
through my thoughts
inside a summer rain
avoiding flattened boxes of Newports

imagining her engulfed by a man
who has her kids, but does not
have her heart.

There will be opinions,
but there can never be questions
about the reality of the stillness

that is solitude.

I am left in empty space
to ponder noises
that echo through her room,
while my surroundings are as silent
as they ever have been.