solitary
walk out –
walk around town –
hood up &head bowed –
feeling so low today –
the canal is temptation –
stick to the towpaths –
everything has remained the same –
even after rain –
the paths are slick – wet – sludge
and the gate metal – slips – against my palm –
the branches of the trees – droop – lower – and glisten –
will the changes happen – take place –
a habit more than anything –
following the paths that i am so familiar with –
finding trees older than i –
creatures more wild than i –
the ghostly shapes of playground apparatus –
shrouded in an evening fog beginning to gather –
assurances of earth and nature –
i need before returning
to locked doors, enforced silence and conformity.
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This poem was written when I was 17/18 years old and edited now as a 25 year old. I wrote many poems then that were similar to this. I did not have a focus at that age. School and depression had left me vulnerable. I wandered and used the toilets in supermarkets and ate in McDonalds and wrote poetry. I was suicidal. It felt as if the pressure of school had left me and not having the routine of school also left me – at a loose end. I was still isolated too, but not being in school and having gotten used to it, that didn’t bother me too much. I was self-sufficient. I eventually joined college and got into a romantic relationship that I shouldn’t have, because it was toxic. The relationship smashed the barriers of protection I had built around myself. There will be more poems on that.
