Hello and welcome to Imagine a Bird!
For this first blog post, I’d like to share a poem about living alone. Just as life with a live-in partner, family or roommate has its contrasts and ups and downs, the experience of filling a home with only yourself also has wavering positives and negatives.
-Kim
2023
Dichotomy, Interweave (a tetralogy poem)
I.
While traveling a decade ago, a fellow hosteller shared his thoughts about living alone. “It’s as though every detail matters. You’re totally tuned in with no one to distract you. You notice everything and it impacts you heavily – the weather, the feel of a neighborhood and city…. You often make life decisions based on these details. Where to live, and how.”
II.
Full focus on light in a room
(a crystal sun catcher casting rainbows across white, rented walls)
Houseplants as listeners.
Pets as conversationalists.
Every item in the kitchen is yours:
the vegetables, cold fruit, cookies, beer
the frozen leftovers for your future self
the five bottles of hot sauce
the iron skillets aging gracefully
the stained, beloved tea cup
There is the sound of slurping soup;
The appearance of your glistening tongue
beneath your nose,
licking a plate after a meal.
The coming of rain as Companion – and of wind, of snow, of cloud formations through windows.
Eric Klinenberg called it “going solo”
Singleton is to home as nucleus is to cell.
Leave, return, open the door time and time again to territorial integrity.
Impulses have no observer, no babysitter
There is boundless privacy
Time: as shedding skin covering bones –
yours alone
III.
The screaming of a neighbor at 3 in the morning. Slamming of doors. Roar of busses, cars, and motorcycles. Cat fights, barking dogs. A high-pitched fullness in ears: humming refrigerator, heater, anything connected to the grid.
Unaided chores: groaning, feet-dragging burn-out.
Thoughts in isolation. Wet-faced meditations. Spiraling emotions.
IV.
The deep quiet and disarray after visitors leave.
A longing for them to return
as soon
as possible.