Tuesday, April 19, 2022: Patricia Carragon's poem "Solitude"

Eugene Robert Richee/Deutsche Kinemathek - Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin / Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery

Solitude

Solitude plays film noir—

her haute couture wears despair

like satin pumps.

She is Marlene Dietrich—

elegant black feathers

cast a veil across her face.

She walks beside me—

extends in sunlight,

moves inward at night.

She is like me,

can survive

without your support.

She sits beside me,

explains that not all firestorms

are alike,

that dark rainbows

come in various shades

of lies and abuse.

Billie Holiday

sings a silent prayer

for you to return.

The room’s stillness

collides with the one within—

a storm brews between the past and present.

Solitude argues with night,

and the gap between logic and absurdity

makes this room smaller than it is.

© 2022 Patricia Carragon

Bio: Patricia Carragon latest books from Poets Wear Prada are Meowku and The Cupcake Chronicles, and Innocence from Finishing Line Press. Ms. Carragon hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology and is an executive editor for Home Planet News Online. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.