A Prairie Home Companion from American Public Media: First Person

The Lonely Inside
by Snow Taylor
December 20, 2006

It is lonely here
among things so familiar
no energy is spent in their recollection.
Even in the dark I see them, know them well.

It is lonely here and growing more so
among people I have known longest and best;
familiar people who need no recalling to my mind
because they are always there, inside the warm places.
But now I seem to know only their faces;
their hearts are strange and foreign to me
and they have made my heart just an old acquaintance
as they brush by to the comfort of more pleasant places
and later times with newer faces.

It is lonely here
where angry voices grow angrier.
I find myself trying to dodge verbal arrows that fly
with their deadly poison aimed at the middle of my heart.
But there are just too many to avoid all of them.
I am caught by surprise as their sharp points
plunge into my softest spot, painfully hitting their mark,
causing new hurt that neither they nor I thought could be.

It really is lonely here and
there must be some way to make it less so.
Can't we talk, or maybe play that new game you gave me at Christmas,
or just turn the pages of pictures
carefully placed in our book called Yesterday?
No, I am told, it is a time for making new memories
and letting new friends sit close and turn the pages
until they grow sleepy and rest on each other's chest
where relationships are easier to get and forget.

I am on the outside now
looking in at new memories being made
because the old ones just don't wear well anymore.
My vision is becoming blurred,
partly by my breathing against the window
and partly by the tears that come when love is lost.
It is cold out here, unfriendly too,
where darkness and chill make a hostile pair
against any who seek refuge in their world.

I walk away and the voices inside become faint
as the power of night swallows them whole.
It is difficult to hear or think.
My heavy breathing now crowds out the sounds of tonight
and perhaps forever.
Am I leaving or have I been left?
Never mind, tonight is too cold for thinking,
but tomorrow the chill will leave.
And when it is warm, I will think again
about where I will find warmth, inside or out.
Will those I know so well whose coldness chills me now
find a way to warm me once more? I them as well?
Or are all of the precious things we remember
frozen forever in the time and space of yesterday—
a memory too stiff and painful to recall.

Will tomorrow be a new day and will hope
rise with the morning sun?
Or is life now merely about opportunities lost
in the frailty of humans being?

About the author:
I am a 70 year-old male; retired from a paying job and living on the North Carolina coast.