The Scrollers
I write. Pouring words into the night,
like tears into nothingness.
A thousand lines, a thousand lives,
a thousand voices, never asked for.
A few stop. Spend a minute.
Nod. "Beautiful." Then move on.
The majority scrollers. A swipe of a finger,
and I am no more. I never was.
The paper yellows. The ink fades.
Me too. Every day a little less.
What is the work worth, if no one remains within?
What is the heart worth, if it only beats to its own rhythm?
Thirty years? Fifty? A hundred?
A flash. A short breath.
Then darkness. And the words
I wrote gather dust
on the shelves of people
who no longer remember
how they got there.
Inner loneliness. Outer silence.
Every connection is mutual, but
the loan is never equal.
I give. They take.
And me? What do I get?
Another night, where
my pen bleeds onto the paper,
and no one bandaged the wound.
Passing. That is the only truth.
Every work of mine is a dead child,
buried line by line,
hoping they will rise again.
But the resurrection does not come.
Only the scrolling. The moving on.
The "like" button that does not touch.
The comment that never arrives.
And I sit here. Still writing.
Because what else could I do?
The silence cannot be broken
by non-existence.
Only by words.
By these words,
which you do not look for,
but which I cannot help but let out.
Because writing, too, is loneliness.
And loneliness, too, shall pass.
Only the words remain.
Dusty. Buried.
Waiting for someone, someday,
perhaps, after all, to stop.
