Now I Know How Loneliness Looks~ By Iryna Lialko

Now I know how loneliness looks
one
of a great number
of masks
is more right.

The loneliness is
                      empty
                              slanting
                                        streets.
The loneliness is the
                           dead
                       of        night.
It is grieving
and
the growing mute night,
eternally beginning,
not predicting the dawn.
These are shaded and cooled-down lamps
warmed
without light
at the edges of avenues.
There I stand.
Autumn without leaves
and the beginning of winter without snow eternal winter
not predicting spring.

Color of eyes
of loneliness -
silent, sickly hepatoyellow
neon of the only one bulb
in the ephemeral
totally empty -
wildly empty -
forever empty -
shellacked avenue.

Loneliness
it is calling me with
dark internal voices.     To go,
to speak with the greedy gobbling
shadow.
Shadow.

The loneliness is to look back, peer at the gloom,
to drink gloom,
to be overflowed with it,
to drown in it’s silence, to sink
in its
cold
deep
                                water.
the loneliness feels warm round you,
but it is cold inside.
The light is round you,
but dark inside.

Loneliness - melancholy -
for something
far and sacred -
melancholy for itself.

It is emptiness in it of itself.

​
Author Bio:
Iryna Lialko was born 1981 in Ukraine. She is a performer and painter, currently working in Tennessee (USA). She can be found at: www.lialko.com.ua