If you go,
I will pretend it isn’t so.
Some things I refuse to see clearly.
Lately, you see, I have learned to be lonely.
For so long lonely was a state far away and foreign.
Then came time and a hard persuasian.

With some of us it takes a while.

To me friends were not always so precious.
I was ruled by another impetus,
something to do I could not postpone,
a place to go I could only go alone.
Friends always stole my time,
by any name, on any level, a crime.

With some of us it takes a while.

People just got in the way,
insisting I listen to their gossip and expose`,
and when they insisted I chime in, I hemmed and hawed,
from subject to subject danced and seesawed.
I had nothing much to grieve
and after a while, they would leave.

With some of us it takes a while.

And so it was that year by everlasting year
I learned that the deeper feelings I could not share.
Not me theirs, not they mine.
We could only write or read the headline.
And so though we shared the time
the experience was more of a pantomime.

With some of us it takes awhile.

In the theater everyone hears a different song.
And to one another we never quite belong.
We smile, nod and seem to agree
that the catchy little melody
we hear is really not an entirely different voice
and it is the same performance we applaud and rejoice.

With some of us it takes awhile.

Then suddenly there was a consensus.
People came to listen and discuss.
Friends, wonderful people, became vital
I needed them and in my need was tranquil.
And then because of me, because of them
they moved on and I wrote a lonely poem.

With some of us it takes a while.

People need people to be people
and you were a roomful.
Now you are going
and I am pretending
it isn’t so.
Don’t go.