Because only eggrolls & vodka could cure my loneliness,
it came as no surprise that Jack was just another lonely
guy, huffing & puffing to be let in. By morning, everything
seems simple: preserve what dwells in a room called loneliness,
even when the heart’s old elevator demands witness
for its gush & gore. But who among us hasn’t grown lonely
for the elegant accident of someone’s touch? Look around:
all we do is work & play, work & play, lonesome
under an unforgiving blizzard of grief.
Around every hallway I meet another lonely
soul I’d hoped the night might never invoke—dead ringer,
doppelganger. How many more regrets must lurch alone
through the maze of me? How much longer should this body
persist, a blunt blade severing from this world all that is lonely?
–
Michael Boccardo’s (he/him) poems appear in Kestrel, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Iron Horse, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and the anthologies The Power of the Feminine I: Vol II and Poetry Goes to the Movies. He’s a Pushcart finalist and resides in High Point, NC, with two rambunctious tuxedo cats.