sat on a bench, i ate the apple right through to its core, the pips come loose - fall to the floor i often wished, growing up for a companion that wasn’t fiction someone to share the bench with, in a companionable silence on a Sunday afternoon i was eaten and i was bare shown to be a solitary creature and i don’t think anyone considered that i would care after all, my voice was hardly heard could have been the wind to this present day, i now have a companion but they are not here on this Sunday afternoon on days like these watching the shoppers and sat beside nobody i feel as if i am a lonely child again. Kate ©
I wrote this poem when I was 17 or 18 and I didn’t feel like I got it right then. It wasn’t a poem I felt compelled to put right. I guess I have always been a solitary person. I was a pushover as a kid and so shy and sensitive, it was painful and not having a great deal of personality or confidence, I probably wasn’t the easiest of kids to be friends with. It isn’t something I find is easy, making friends. I learnt to do as I was told and bend over backwards to accommodate somebody, because that’s how I thought friendships worked and to keep them, I had to do shit I wasn’t comfortable with. To be honest, I didn’t want to be friends with half of the kids that I tried to be friends with, but it’s as if it is normal to have friends, like a requirement. Books and movies and popular culture said it was so. It’s pathetic if you don’t have friends and hang around with yourself. It’s a lot of work covering up who you are and faking a whole different personality, that’s against who you feel you are or want to be. It wasn’t until I was much older that I realised this, the relentless drive to fit in when you don’t even want to fit in is pointless. Especially if you have lost yourself in the process. Because what are you left with? Nothing. Literally, nothing. No sense of self, self-esteem, confidence, friends.
Poetic Insights 