By Nguyễn Thị Phương Trâm
Loneliness is a cliché you wear like amour, sharpened, shiny?
Or is it simply a fault in your makeup?
You’re manufactured with a loose wire, a missing screw?
To be alone is to admit defeat?
Diminished in character, low self, absent ego?
One or one hundred friends, does it make any difference?
I don’t know.
I just noticed that when I’m present in a moment of kindness, a moment of love.
I forget I was born alone, at that hour just before dawn.
October 2018.