This is a story.

A Poem by Fish

Alone.
She eats alone,
She sleeps alone,
She breathes alone,
She sings along,
She draws alone,
She writes alone,
she thinks alone,
she worries alone,
she cries alone,
she screams alone,
she controls her frustration alone,
she fixes her own problems alone,
.
.
But she does not smile alone.
She does not smile at all, really.
She is alone in every way.
Crowded rooms pushing her
this way and that,
but all the same
she is still alone.
She hides,
alone,
from the friends who ask her to come out.
For the dreaded fear of being alone in a crowd
is far worse than simply being alone
in the safety of one's lonely abode.
.
She has always been alone.
She is alone.
She will alway she will always be alone.
She is used to being forgotten,
to not being noticed,
and she has adapted.
Now that she is older,
she simply doesn't know what to do with herself.
She knows she is alone
and sometimes that is why her heart aches.
That is why her body twists and turns
and tears begin to flow
even though she did not mean too.
She knows she is alone,
truly, she likes to be alone.
Alone she cannot bother anyone,
she cannot hurt anyone,
make mistakes,
or even have a chance to be forgotten.

But sometimes the knowing that she is alone,
sometimes it hurts.
Sometimes she curls in a ball
in a dark room
while the house is empty
and she wallows.
She does not cry,
she simply sits.
Curled up in the frightful misery
that she may not like to be alone.
She knows she likes to be alone,
that things are simple that way
and it frees her of worry,
but sometimes these horrid thoughts
slip in through the cracks of the walls
she has built up so sturdy.
Sometimes those thoughts pull her
and tell her that she should talk to someone.
Tell them that she is hurting,
that she is in pain,
that something it wrong but she doesn't know what.
But then she runs and plugs the holes
because she knows that being alone is how she MUST be.

She writes a poem,
now and then,
and though it is just a few words,
she will sit in the dark,
typing away
with the light from her laptop screen
twinkling into the tears streaming down her face.
Poems make it easy,
writing down words make it easy to remind her
that even if she didn't want to be alone,
no one would want her.
So it's better that she wants to be forgotten.
It saves her from all the chances she has to be hurt.

Hurt like she used to be hurt.
Physical,
Mental,
the little girl who would hop out her window
after blocking her door
as she runs from a man who wants to leave more bruises.

The little girl who would wake up with bloody hands
because she was not allowed to show how she really felt when she was awake,
so her body would scream for help in her sleep
and leave the walls by her bed bloody.

The little girl who was loud and opinionated,
who was told that it wasn't okay
told that she shouldn't speak.

The little girl whose best-friend told a lie,
and left the little girl alone.

The little girl who stopped having birthdays
because she did not deserve the attention
or the presents.

The little girl who was left alone too often.
The little girl who played by herself...
She became an older girl who was much the same.
At night the walls are clean but Bruxism
leaves her head foggy
and throbbing
each morning.
An older girl who maintained friends
but would spend the weekends in her room,
alone.
The girl who wouldn't open presents
or have herself celebrated in anyway.

She became an older girl
whose only wish,
was to make others happy,
even if it meant that she wasn't.