Student Publishing Program ::

Alex Beja

Alone not Lonely

Sitting on a soft cushioned chair
next to a dying fire, long neglected.
Across from a vacant, cold wooden stool
in a spacious white room.

The room is silent.
It would answer if I called upon it,
the television would speak, the radiator would roar to life,
awakening the beast.
But the snow covered walls permit me to sit in a soft serene silence.
The spacious white room is in a small untidy house.
The house contains solely the one who
sits in the armchair.

The small untidy house rests in a large winding neighborhood
And the neighborhood sits in a sleepy old town.
It could whisper secrets of the
inhabitant’s sorrow
but it holds its silence.

If I ventured out into the real world I would
find many neighborhoods,
None so silent, all in ruin, yelling as one
The voices high and low reaching a roar,
rebounding off mountains and back into the faces of those
who need to be heard but

In the sleepy old town the screams are only a murmur,
Silenced by the sleeping of
the large winding neighborhood,
Unnoticed by the small untidy house,
Overlooked in the spacious white room,

I slumber on,
I slumber on.

[TABLE OF CONTENTS, LHS CLASS OF 2011 EDITION]