Spooning with Loneliness: Revised...and I'm Back!

This one is so close to my heart--I feel sad every time I read it. What started out as an experiment with a literary device (personification of an emotion) has turned in to a whole lot more. I've sorely neglected my writing, but I'm back and better than ever. "Spooning with Loneliness" has been published and presented but I did some revisions which I feel made it more powerful.


Spooning with Loneliness
2011

On nights when shadows whisper and
blackness swallows the moon; I
feel him near. Slipping into my bed,
I am spooning with Loneliness.
Hush, he whispers, I am here now.
Wrapping his arms around me, he
holds me tight, caressing my shoulders,
coaxing out the chill long-settled
into my bones.

You are not alone, Loneliness speaks smoothly
into my hair, I'll stay beside you. His warm
breath strokes my bare neck
as melting into me,
we lay together in the stillness.
Shrouded in his familiar presence,
sighing winds brush through trees,
tapping a
cadence on the glass
window pane.
A glimmer of starlight
strains to shimmer, only to be
snuffed out by the deepening dark.

Sleep now, croons Loneliness.
Shuddering,
saltiness streaks down my eyes to his arms,
staining sheets with my pain.
Wiping away my tears, he softly
soaks moisture from my cheeks.
I'll never leave you,
his whispered promise
stretching to fill the emptiness
in the bed next to me, staying with
me until dawn.