Sonnets

Context — the feeling of walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood in summer and realizing that you’re caught in the surface tension, stuck above submergence in the communal warmth.

The skies are blue. The air is fresh. The wind
relays a grill of sausage, summer’s feast.
Inhaled from beyond the fence that, tinned
the in from out relentlessly there creased.
You’re neighbor fleeting to the revelry
of jolly masses, yearning weekend’s joys,
yet separated by man’s beveled scree
from smile and quip and backslap it employs.
You grin for your adjacency to cheer
and tighten vertebrae to walk with pride,
convincing passers-by with your veneer
that all is right atop and right inside.
Yet ticker tape ‘tween ears leaves void abyss:
aloneness permeates all outward bliss.