Solitary

Past my window, up the stairs, and around the bend in the hall
Pass five thousand faces, and none of them yours.

On my street, there’s a man selling fruit out of a cart.
He gets new customers every day, but none of them
Know the weight of my heart these days like you do.

There are dishes on the table, drained spaghetti in a sieve in the sink,
But of the millions outside my door, I’m the only one here to eat.

And if it were you who passed by tomorrow,
Or you buying fruit today, I wouldn’t — couldn’t! —
Believe my own eyes, and I’d eat my dinner alone.

Notes

I got the idea for this when I was participating in a summer program where I was away from home for over a month, and I got very homesick. The poem starts out reflecting that initially, because we got a Family Day in the summer program on which our families could come and visit us, and I sat waiting for them to show up, watching other parents come up to see their kids before mine finally came. The rest of the poem is unrelated to my real life, and I picture it describing the life of some woman whose lover has been away for such a long time that even if he did show up again, she wouldn’t be able to believe it.