i.

There is a growing suspicion that the fear of dying alone tends to manifest within the soul of an individual that is terrified or incapable of love. When one holds others at a distance, separating emotion and building a wall around the heart, what other end can there be? You see it and can predict it and feel it deeply, bitterly, like Crane’s desert beast, singular, teeth tearing into that dense muscle, knowing that there is no rescue from that fate. Your fear has predestined you. There is nothing else for it. Alone, then.

ii.

There is also a growing suspicion that those that fear being with the wrong love more than being alone are secretly the same. We speak it into being, being too proud to admit the effect of that dreaded “L” word, stronger than love, cousin of love. It is easy to criticize a fault in another, but I have also built my walls. Tended the defenses. Separated my emotions. At the first stirring of the heart, the only course of action is to flee. Declare unworthiness. It is more terrifying to be known, intimately, and thus another fate is sealed. Alone, then.

iii.

I’ve done all my running.
I am an open book, easily found.
Perhaps we can defy fate?

Or perhaps not?

Alone, then?