This Lonely Choice, A Sestina

In a crowd or with one or a few
I remain solo, apart, alone.
My best friend is my loneliness
for with myself I don’t have to talk
or remember that name I forget.
I know I’m alive when I ache.

Live enough years with an ache,
you grow numb and feel few
ups or downs. Life is gray. You forget
how to laugh or to cry. Alone
with stranger or spouse, small talk
falters toward loneliness.

I cling to despair and to loneliness,
to the comfort of knowing the ache.
I don’t want to remember to talk
when the words breaking silence are few.
I’m accustomed to feeling alone;
short-lived joy I might never forget.

Never knowing, you need not forget.
It’s safer to falter in loneliness.
It’s not frightful to suffer alone
when long habit has softened the ache.
The times of regret now are few,
and to dream of escape is mere talk
And yet, I’ve begun now to talk.

How unlikely am I to forget?
The rewards of old patterns are few
and the profligate cost is my loneliness.
Can I really survive with the ache
when I perceive myself one alone?

Solitude’s pleasure from being alone
is a fib, just ingenuous talk
when you know what it is by the ache
that you’ll never again just forget.
The comfort once settled in loneliness
perishes. Remnants and shards, just a few.

I can’t regress to a lifetime alone, can’t forget
my thought, my talk of ubiquitous loneliness.
Friendships may ache – but give me a few. 

From Slender Steps to Sanity:
Twelve-Step Notes of Hope
by OAStepper