Alone, not alone

There is a lacking interest in engaging with other people,
in dialogue,
eye contact,
In the America's US.

Not disinterest, perhaps not lacking interest, but repressed,
repressed interest.
The interest is inherent in the human experience,
to want to see & be heard,
to hear and be seen,
to communicate
to engage. However,
there is a social conv-
ention,
arising from
complex dynamics of diversity &
clahings of culture coming together
in high-rate streets
& plolitics
& grocery stores
in bars,
a social convention of not wanting
to offend any one.
This is not the only con-
versation, obivously,
there are others,
as diverse as the culture(s) they
arise from,
some antithetical to this,
none-the-less
there is the convention.
& I see
it is rooted, not so much
in a desire
to be good
always,
but to not be
alone,
to not be left,
physically, energetically,
to not be alone creates the very social convention
which perpetuates
that feeling,
this sense
of the Issolated
American Public
divided by oceans
from their ancestry,
& even in crowds
unable to reach out
for fret of being pushed away
in a concert,
in a bar,
of not being recieved,
or of being recieved
and then made to feel
inferior,
other,
not
met with curiosity
& warmth,
but a cold, civil shoulder.


The insight arose
not from such an
experience,
but rather its opposite,
in a restaurant,
when a waitress
brings a little girl
a heaping dish
of cake
&
the parent's eyes widen
as she overcomes her own
astonishment in a single glimpse
& draws the plate towards her,
her smile growing large around new teeth.
They smile too and notice me
noticing them
& our smiles deepen
& I look away
to not make the little girl self conscious,
before she notices me,
from their cue,
I looked away;
she is happy they are
happy & there is cake.
And in the moments between
I could see the social convention
we were breaking
as it was
part of the smiles.

As the waitress
brings our box my fiance mentions
that she "is
all alone
today
on the serving floor."
"I'm always alone,"
the waitress agrees.