Alone

The room was different. Or was it just the same, and she had only realized something in her was different, which made the room different?

Tears were threatening to stream down her face. The music was overpowering her. What it had meant for the people who wrote it.

She wondered what it would be like to sit alone. Completely alone. Without anything near her. It seemed like there was always something there. Whether it was the others around her, or the music and emotions it brought, or the wind and the trees with their delicate leaves, or the mirror looking back at her; she was never alone.

But as she stared at her notepad, eyes suddenly still, music washing over her, alone was what she felt.

Her pencil dropped through the air, completely silent until it came to the floor. She barely heard it rolling until it came to a complete stop. Her hands were trying hard to shake, but she tried not to let them.

No one could see her here. No one cared. No one was trying to understand or trying to see her. No one could see her eyes straining to keep back the tears.

She was all alone in her room, weaving secret meanings out of her words. No one was reading them. She could hear the others around her, but her hands suddenly stopped writing, having picked up her pencil.

The tears were still there, but instead she just stared ahead. Her hands started to move again.

Quickly she began to think up a story. A story to make the feeling go away. In a way it was peaceful, but she wanted to move away from it. She didn't know why. She wanted to move away from the understanding she might get from sitting alone with the music. Music with a meaning she did not truly know.

When you died, were you alone?

Alone seemed enough words for the feeling she felt. Alone could describe it perfectly, for perhaps every person has a sense of what it would be to be perfectly alone, even if there are others near. She was truly feeling it for the first time.

Alone was the way she stared forward at nothing. Alone was the way the air suddenly felt colder. Not cold, but colder. Alone was the unexplainable feeling she felt at the back of her mind.

The story would come and take her away soon, she would go away to a place where she could pretend she had not felt it. She didn't want to feel alone the way she had felt in her room. She was almost afraid of the way she might find something.

When you left this world... when you left the others... whether you were sitting quietly in a garden watching the sun or mist around you, whether you were asleep in a land of sweet dreams or nightmares, whether you were sitting in a hospital with machines and harsh, bright lights...

Were you alone, that feeling stronger than the others, yet not recognized?

When you died...

where you alone?