Because I am trying to understand
human loneliness, scientifically, I mean.
I’m aiming to measure it in a beaker,
study it on a graph. I want to look it up
in the Encyclopedia Brittanica, under “L.”
Search for the bio of the guy who conceived
of fog horns—to have found the pitch
perfect sound of our dread.
He must have lived in a hovel
by the sea.  Must have understood
the echo of a cloud. I’m looking
to sit in the church to my bellows.  
Sadness, I used to lay in the meadow
with it, straws of grass in my whistle-hole.
It was the light coming through rafters.
It was the dark machine eating up
my treasured cassette tapes.
It has nothing to do with love
of others. It lives on nothing
but a void.   Always lurking
just behind the door.  I’m sitting
in a kiosk, stalking an old lover
on a screen, a flesh substitute
for what it is I can’t decipher.
The fog is thicker than my soul.

Cynthia Atkins (She, Her), originally from Chicago, IL is the author of Psyche’s Weathers, In the Event of Full Disclosure, and Still-Life with God, and Duets. Forthcoming in 2027 “The Honeymoon of Sorrows” Her work has appeared in many journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, BOMB, Cider Press Review, Diode, Cimarron Review, Florida Review, Los Angeles Review, Michigan City Review of Books, North American Review, Okay Donkey, Permafrost, Plume,  Volta. She earned her MFA from Columbia University and teaches at Blue Ridge Community College. Atkins has earned fellowships and prizes from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, SWWIM Residency @TheBetsyHotel Writer’s Room, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Writer’s Voice, and Writers Work. Atkins lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County, VA, www.cynthiaatkins.com.