crowded places

when the sadness grew too large to hide
i took it where the crowds reside
through station halls and market light
through busy days and crowded nights

i liked the stores with humming aisles
their practiced rows, their painted smiles
the apples waxed, the bread arranged
a thousand lives I could not claim

a woman laughing by the bread
a child asleep, his heavy head
a man with flowers wrapped in white
all disappearing into night

i came for proof the world still spun
for proof the morning always comes
for proof that people carried on
despite the losses they had known

for loneliness is not a room
it is a city seen through the gloom
where every window shines with gold
and leaves you standing in the cold

i sat in cafés after dark
among the spoons and china sparks
and listened to the rising sound
of lives still turning all around

the room would swell with cups and steam
with fragments of another dream
and every voice would blur and blend
into a hymn without an end

i wanted nothing from the crowd
not comfort spoken soft or loud
not rescue from what hurt within
just somewhere i could disappear in

because there was a strange relief
in being nameless in my grief
a single shadow passing through
among a hundred others too

i learned which bookstore stayed awake
which diner glowed beside the lake
which corners held the evening longest
which streets made loneliness feel smallest

and every night i'd wander home
through neighborhoods i'd always known
carrying what i could not lose
the old familiar shade of blue

yet somehow it felt less severe
when other heartbeats gathered near
as though my sorrow, vast and wild
became a little less so exiled

but hope was brief and thin as thread
it followed where the daylight led
then slipped away at closing time
and left me with what still was mine

so back i'd go the following day
to lose myself among the gray
and stand where countless strangers passed
as if their motion made me last

and if enough of them went by
beneath the same indifferent sky
perhaps the world would pull me in
perhaps i'd learn to live again