English Literature

As I walk up the long hill heading home,

sweating under the midday sun,

I see a girl seating cross-legged upon the grass

near a tree, an empty coffee mug beside her.

She not even once looks up;

all I can see is her black silky hair

on top of her head, facing down,

her eyes lost among words and pages of a book.

George Orwell's 1984.

For a second I believe I try to mutter something

but nothing comes out of it

just pure silence,

the mutual understanding that we, both,

suffer from the same illness,

senseless reaching for something to grab,

something to hold us beneath the surface

of a world we can no longer touch.