Flood in the Cellar

Loneliness is a word rooted in emptiness, in darkness, in me. When I write about it, it swirls off the page in waves of deep ocean blue, cascades over me and pulls me under. It smells of a forgotten flood in the cellar, musk and mildew. Old photographs still floating, a sea of faces never to be claimed. These days, my body is a weight my soul is too tired to carry, so I tell it to sleep instead. But sleep is really just a bottle I keep in my bedside table.