37 Weeks of Solitude, a poem
Illustration by Aimee Lew
Week I
A cold wind.
Clouds forming on the ceiling late last night.
Emily would call it early.
“You technically are a morning person,”
she’d say when I’d emerge in the afternoons
with puffy eyes. “All those 4 AMs.”
Week III
When Emily went back home,
I aligned her empty room
with happiness.
I never entered it, but pressed my ear up against the door.
On the phone one night she mentioned her window
might be open. “Can you close it for me if it is?”
Nestled up
against the white painted wood, I could hear
a cold wind was dancing in, but still
I never entered. “It’ll be good
for you to have some time alone, to write.
You can see James maybe, and walk that lady’s dog.”
Her suitcases were parked by her toes. She’d surveyed
the hallway as though anticipating a corpse to fall
from the floor above us,
but all that fell was the quiet knowledge
that I would be alone amongst the mugs and half used
toothpastes whilst everyone else was going home.
”And water Cassidy!”
We’d named
our spiky red house plant Cassidy because
that was Emily’s grandmother’s name.
The one who didn’t buy Sony products
because of Japan and WW2, or something.
Looked like the hand of a zombie reaching out from
below the ground.
I haven’t gone in Emily’s room
so I don’t know how it’s doing but I have my suspicions
the poor thing isn’t doing all too well.
Week IV
I receive the world grudgingly at my bedroom door.
It’s like when a cat drags in a dead mouse.
Why would anyone want this?
No one wakes me up by singing in the shower,
no one is sat typing at the kitchen table when I drag my body
to the white lit kitchen to butter a bagel
or make a cup of tea.
Week IX
“You need to fill my room,” said Emily in July,
but her parents were still paying rent so I ignored
this message.
Week XII
In waking life I dated a bit. Had men lay atop my duvet,
I touched their bodies— and they mine.
Didn’t want to see anyone
more than once or twice.
I lay beneath their movements
as though they were trees in a storm
and I, a clueless drifter— what kind of shelter was this?
In sleeping life I spectated venom launching from the mouths I made it my life’s work to kiss, as I pleaded for silence
with my hands.
Week XX
Is it true your soul changes shape as you age?
Mine was spherical once I think but time has kneaded it
into something more jagged.
It is harder to be held now, maybe,
but I am okay with this. It can’t roll away from me again.
Tea cools on the bedside table beside the books,
the world left outside; twitching and hideous,
but we are well beyond belief or surprise now aren’t we?
Week XXI
Don’t think
she’s coming back.
Walked to the sea and watched the tide
stretch out like a pair of arms
in the morning (something I cannot bear to witness)
as the sun yawned in the sky - I rippled
gold beneath it.
I would be in Paris
right about now,
but instead I am gasping beneath the stamping boot
of tyrannical solitude, its sole checkered
with the most poison blue sadness,
a duplicating, replicating,
searing blue sadness, for which I have no antibodies.
Week XXVII
Emily got a boyfriend and stayed back at home
with her parents even though she used to hate her parents
but I guess they patched things up through the days
and nights crossing paths on the stairs,
her mum saying it’s bad luck
and Emily splitting hairs about her grades and horoscopes.
Needless to say Cassidy, both plant and woman,
died within a week of each other.
Week XXXVII
I moved into a studio.
A sunlit room.
I never opened Emily’s door. I swear I think
a bird flew in at one point. I haven’t laid eyes upon my parents
since it all began, I have nothing but time on my hands.
A boy I’ve seen three times
nestled his ear against my chest and told me
he doesn’t think I have a heartbeat,
talks to me about the numbers rising and falling,
about what’s happening in America, says he has a good feeling
about this year
as I watch clouds forming on the ceiling.
It looks like a hurricane.
George Tomsett is a poet and fourth year student at the University of Edinburgh studying English Literature. He has published two poetry anthologies, Just About and GET IN THE CAR, THE WORLD IS ENDING, and you can find more of his work here: https://getinthecartheworldisending.company.site