Loneliness
When silence stops being peaceful and starts becoming a prison.
It is a disease—
one that eats you slowly,
thought by thought,
until it shows up in your body.
And by the time you feel it,
it’s already too late.
When you finally see it,
you find nothing but emptiness,
stretching out in every direction.
Loneliness is when your voice hits walls that don’t echo back.
Loneliness is when your words dissolve before they’re heard.
Loneliness is when you’re seen, but never noticed.
Loneliness is when you speak, but aren’t understood.
Loneliness is dirt pressed against your lips,
gasping for air that never comes.
Loneliness is chains you can’t see,
but feel every time you try to move.
Loneliness is standing in a crowd,
and feeling the cold of distance all the same.
It starts small.
A declined invitation.
A misplaced word.
An unconscious bias.
An opinion ignored.
They fester. They grow.
They fill you with the illusion of control—
until silence feels safer than speech,
and isolation feels easier than connection.
You push.
They withdraw.
And soon, you’re left standing alone,
wondering when the silence became your only company.
Backstory: Loneliness
I wrote this poem, Loneliness, a few days ago. It is something I've grappled with for as long as I can remember. Most times, it’s quiet. So quiet, you don’t even know it’s there until it’s everywhere.
For me, it didn’t come as heartbreak or a breakup. It came in slow moments—missed calls, paused conversations, a growing sense that I was speaking but not really being heard. I was surrounded by people, yet somehow, alone.
It wasn’t isolation. It was invisibility.
It started in my head—a thought, then another, pulling me inward. Before I knew it, I was slipping into silence, into distance, into the comfort of my own echo. It felt safer not to reach out than to feel ignored. That’s the trick of loneliness—it pretends to protect you while it slowly pulls you apart.
This poem is about that.
About how loneliness builds—not in one moment, but in a thousand tiny ones. And how by the time you notice it, you’ve already stopped noticing everything else.
A dear friend of mine witnessed something visceral and raw the other day. This poem is dedicated to her, hoping these words brings some relief.
Loneliness is a disease; it is not a state of mind. It has the potential to kill you if left untreated.