Alone

Alone.

Looking out watching as kids play outside the run-down cheap motel grounds.

Watching as I see a little girl, no older than 5, smile as her mother ran after her.

The sound of the T.V. consuming the throat-clenching silence.

My eyes shift from the broken dirty window to my siblings.

Sharing one cup of Ramen using a half broken Wendy's fork.

My stomach growls in protest, my gut telling me I should of joined them,

but my mind and my heart telling myself that if anyone needed the food more?

It was them.

Alone.

My thoughts hazy as I nervously pick at my already ruined cuticles as my mom digs...

Digs into a bottomless blue solo cup of pennies.

Trying to grasp onto lost hope of her children being able to eat.

Of her children being able to have a roof over their heads and food in their stomach.

Alone. 

Crying myself to sleep as I go to bed hungry the second night in a row as my siblings ate well.

Alone.

As I walk them to school, empty 211 beer cans seen from a mile away.

Crushed up on the motel lawn as a homeless man frantically picks them up. 

Hoping to make money to probably get food. 

Alone. 

Saying goodbye to the three younger faces of the kids I spent so many years after washing.

Bathing. Clothing. Feeding.

Alone. 

3 years ago, had I not noticed the signs of my mom struggling to make sure we had everything,

I would have never learned the most important thing.

Loneliness in a world full of company sometimes never is so bad.

Loneliness is what motivated me to continue past Sophmore year.

Loneliness is what made me come home everynight and take over the most important people in my life.

Loneliness is what motivated me to keeping up my grades and increasing my GPA so that one day..

My lonliness would one day morph into happiness.

Alone.

Closing my eyes as I watch myself stride confidentally across that Robinson High School auditorium stage.

Alone.

Watching my mom, hair gray with age and skin pale as can be with a smile on her face.

Alone.

My family beside her, clapping and cheering as I take that one important high school document in my sweaty hand.

Walking across that stage and thinking one thing.

You were alone...but you had the company of lonlieness to keep you sane.

 

This poem is about: 
Me
My family

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