The eyes. Something about the eyes. There’s a sort of blue sheen to them, and they could have the brownest eyes in the world and have the bluest eyes. And perhaps maybe the way they stand in public, arms folded or uncrossed, either wanting all the love and company in the world or trying to push it away and lock it out. Some seem to welcome loneliness and greet it like an old friend or a past lover while others seem to fold up like origami, tucking their corners down. They look sort of… wilted. Others, still, seem to just have this aura about them, where their own loneliness is so palpable that you can taste it on your tongue when you walk past them, and it’s coppery and sharp like oxidized pennies. Loneliness comes in all sorts of different shapes and forms. I work with a woman who’s recently gotten herself mixed up with a married man and it’s sad and funny what someone who’s lonely will do to excuse an indiscretion like that. She tells me that he doesn’t get along well with his wife but that he’s too old to leave her and his daughter and she’d force him to pay her thousands in child support. Loneliness makes you greedy, and I suppose he’s lonely too. People like to build castles from that kind of loneliness. 

I’ll let you in on a little secret. I’m lonely. I don’t claim to be better or worse off than anyone else, because someone always will be lonelier than you. Most days it’s nothing, just a fact, all neat and simple and logical and other days it’s awful, and I feel this weight on my chest and colours don’t blend or make sense and I feel blurred and hollowed out, all empty space right between my lungs. It’s harder for me on days where the turning of a page in a book is louder than my own heart beat. But I get on. Because those days are few and far between and there’s plenty of things to fill that empty space. Some days you just have to work harder to make your own light.