Loneliness

Is there a sound to loneliness?
Can silence be inverted - not just into
The absence of sound but the
Forced exhalation of air as even the
Possibility of words are taken away?
What does it mean to pass sleepless nights,
A mind churning and bubbling over with impossibilities,
With a heart pining for the hands and arms that
Only ever wanted to use you just to push you away again
Once the veins were drained and cracked from overuse?
What does it mean when those sleepless nights
aren't matched by the sleepless voices and eyes
of the one you love?
That's when the exhalation begins,
Slowly, as you first weep all the air out of your lungs,
But faster and faster the noise of
loneliness pushing every bit of time and memory
out of your body, as you realize there
Was probably no air there to have sustained you in the first place,
Nothing but cheap promises and false tears.
This terrible noise, the inverse of silence,
the gnawing and thrashing of embittered arteries and tired veins
and aching of hollow lungs -
This is the sound of loneliness.
The terrible, awful sound of the beating heart
against the infinite backdrop of muffled, muted space.

But at least, at least, you know who you are,
and this time the loneliness won't frighten you.