Alone

I’ve moved so many times I’ve stopped keeping track

Every address I leave behind, nothing but a footprint in the endless sand of life

My roots have been uprooted so often that they refuse to touch the ground

For they fear, like I do, that they will be torn from it once again

Each relationship I make

Tested like a rubber band

Stretched until it can bear no longer

So only a few remain

Every day my face is obscured by a mask

A mask for everyone but me

I hide my true self in the hopes that the people around me will like the fake one more

But every day I have to tear it off

I grow bigger, stand taller, in hopes that my troubles will shrink in proportion

I walk faster, step further in hopes that my fears will not catch up

But in the end

They always prevail

They tackle me like an NFL linebacker

Beat me up like a young Muhammad Ali

I lie on the ground, motionless

Praying that the relentless blows will sometime cease

Like a gang obeying the commands of a mob boss

My troubles and fears retreat

And out comes my greatest antagonist

Loneliness

For I feel alone in a school of over fifteen hundred

I feel alone surrounded by those that admire me

I feel alone surrounded by the people I often call my friends

I feel alone

In my mind I go to an empty school

Classes and hallways vacant

Occupied only by my thoughts, my feelings

They echo

They tell me I’m not good enough

That I’ll never live up to anyones expectations

They tell me I’m pathetic

They tell me I’ll always be alone

And this is not some poem with a happy ending

This is not one where I find happiness with some other being

No

This is the poem I live, every day of my life

However, I do retain the hope that it will one day change

The antagonists erased from the page

The classes and hallways filled with lively others

The voices changed to voices of encouragement

But for now I live alone

Locked in my own cage

Handler of my own keys

Tortured by my own mind