Emoetry

Seven years ago, I discovered a handy service called Yahoo Briefcase. An online storage "briefcase" for your files, it was an easy way to back-up my writing someplace other than my computer or a flash drive. I loaded many files to the Briefcase from about 2002-2006. Then, since I had other online storage available, the Briefcase sort of slipped from my mind. Until I got an email last week, informing me that the Yahoo Briefcase service was being discontinued, and advising that I download any files I had stored there before they disappeared forever.

It was like finding a treasure chest - some fool's gold, to be sure, but a few gems in the rubble. Story ideas, lines of dialogue, even a few complete scripts and shorts I wrote years ago and had forgotten about. Most of the files were scripts, fiction-prose, or lesson plans - but there were two poems, each saved as their own small .doc file. One of them was entitled, simply "loneliness poem."*

The poem is from about three years ago. I wouldn't say it's a good poem; playwright, I can claim, but great poet, I shall never be. [I do admire those who can distill emotional depth in a few stanzas, and envy their skill.] But reading this poem, though I couldn't suppress an eye roll... I also have to admit that it made something stir in me. I could not remember the exact day or moment of gathering these words, yet I could remember how I felt when it was written.

Here is the poem:

loneliness poem
the danger
- as i see it -
is that the lonelier you are
the lonelier you will become...
because loneliness repels
and attracts the attention
only
of the other
lonely
who glance over
briefly, quickly,
see your
solitude
and murmur
i know, i know...
soothingly,
to
themselves.

It's funny how much a poem can at once reveal and conceal. When I wrote this poem, three years ago, I was a graduate student, in a social work school [or as I referred to it on my more bitter days, an antisocial work school]. I have always been one who can connect, one who longs to be part of the cast, the team, the family - and now I suddenly had few friends in proximity. I was constantly surrounded by people, but connected with few - and could see that I was not the only one in that predicament, yet still felt unable to break the barriers and find a way to reach the other loners.

And maybe on some level, I didn't want to - I needed to learn what it was like to spend a lot of time on my own. Though I logically knew this was a finite phase of my life, I was also afraid that even if I needed to learn something about solitude - what if this foreign period, this newfound loneliness, lingered and self-perpetuated for too long? Both of these emotional truths, I think, come through in the poem.

However, one who doesn't know me well might also infer from this poem that I was single when I composed this piece... while those who do know me well will know that the opposite was true. One might think I was calling out the other lonely people; I was, and I wasn't. I was just trying to acknowledge the chasm surrounding us.

I felt sad reading the poem, but also profoundly relieved. It is from a chapter now closed. I did gain strength and learn some important things about myself during that period of frequent solitude. I'm also glad to be past it. In my life now, I have moments of loneliness, but they are just that: moments. Not months. Not oppressive. Not all-encompassing. Just... human.

Finding this poem brought back some memories, not all pleasant, but all important. It also reminded me of the power of writing, for ourselves and for others. Eras can be preserved, emotions made tangible once more, by encasing our experiences in our stories, scripts, and yes - our poems. Though to clarify, "being inspired to write more poetry" is not on the list of things that have resulted from finding this one. As my mother and I have joked on more than one occasion, I pretty much only write poetry when I'm down, and I pretty much only write bad poetry. For both these reasons, I'm happy to report that I haven't been cranking out much poetry of late.


*When I mentioned this to the boy, his comment was "Oh, baby. You wrote emo poetry?" Hence the title of this blog post.