Tuesday afternoon and the house is silence,

spirits of life gone to their job and friends,

in solitude I set with my internet umbilical cord,

tethered to names whose faces I’ve never met.

 

They have no voices and make no sounds,

thoughts in messages are mere fillers,

constant reminders that I am isolated,

a solitary creature in a chamber

where I play the television to keep

some noise going in the emptiness

to help deter the sense of loneliness.

 

The world outside my window teems with life,

neighbors kids play in the yard,

I can hear the parents discussing some repair,

birds gather and sing in the trees,

stray dogs and cats roam around the yards.

 

Above the sky is cloudy and cold,

trying not to allow this void in people

to seep into my spirit

as reminders of my hermit existence

during the long weekday hours alone.

 

Letting my fingers walk the keyboard

and flush out the child inside,

the dreamer and adventurer,

spinning a tale to disappear into its images,

allowing them to take me far away

from this desert I dwell in the middle of suburbia.

 

By night my family will return

when I shall again feel apart

of something beyond myself,

but until then I find

both a peace from the stillness

and a sense of feeling lost at times

in the afternoons of absent hearts.