The man sits in a rocking chair,
watching the road from a porch,
alone.
The house behind him glows warmly
and a silhouette moves past a window.
In the kitchen,
his wife of 45 years makes dinner,
in silence.
Last year and the years before,
they would host dinner parties—
friends would gather in the kitchen
and the clumsy-handed would be sent outside.
The air would be contagious with laughter
and often smell of burnt flour,
but friends would come back again and again.
Things are different now,
the air is contagious with something new
and no one laughs about it.
The man sits alone on the porch
and his wife cooks alone inside,
each thinking about their hosting days,
the friends they will never see again
and the ones they hope to hear from soon.
The isolation they feel is not dissimilar to loneliness—
only, this loneliness is with another.
So It Goes 