Someone’s written a message on the board, a welcoming message to us-the outsiders who are now forced to be one with them, suppose it ought to make me feel better, it does not by a long shot. I think that may be I’m the only one who feels this way, but when I look around, I see no happiness. The smiles I see are bitter, some brave, most resigned. But even those are few. Most of the people look glum, some have resigned themselves to sleep, hoping it will be better them the stark reality.

But its hard to sleep in a strange place, a place hat was once familiar in another forgotten time.

Familiar strangeness. My poetry teacher would call it…

I don’t know, I have forgotten. Things I learnt in this very place are hidden from me, leaving me empty, empty…an emptiness that consumes me… and emptiness that will be filled sometime when the strange becomes familiar and the familiar strange.

A new journey has begun; am grateful for my companions

Wrote this in 2003, first day in a new class
oi, anyone reading this stuff?

I love the night, mostly because of the darkness. I like the dark, and at night it is as dark as it can get, with only the faint twinkle of the distant stars for light on a moonless night... 

But recently my nights have been different. Its not about the dark, its about the emptiness, the loneliness I've suddenly discovered, loneliness I never even knew existed... this night is no different. 

I am drowning in the silence. Silence only broken by the slap of waves on against my boat. It is cold thanks to the breeze filling the sails... I'm lonely, really lonely. No one ever ventures this far out to sea, no one, not even the most desperate of fishermen. all I can see for miles around is water. 

The sky looks like a dark cloth with pearls sewed onto it, pearls constantly winking at each other like friends who share a secret. The moon looks strangely out of place in that black eternity. As if to make up for this, it has lent the water a silvery sheen, I am sailing on a sea of silver... but when I look down, all I see is darkness. There is nothing of the silver there, nothing. Its like it has just been swallowed up in the water's mysterious' depths. 

 Once in a while I can see a light winking on the horizon. it reminds me that there are others out there, others like me, and yet not, awakens that yearning in the deepest darkest reaches of my heart, a yearning for a kindred soul, someone to keep me company in these now strangely long hours of the darkness that once held peace for me. 

Once. Now all they promise is a restlessness, and a mind forever drifting... I need someone, someone to tie me down, someone to draw me back to land, an anchor to fill this emptiness, the loneliness that consumes me. someone who'll understand me, take me for who I am without trying to change me... 

 ... Maybe they'll heal me...

This is a combo of about three different pieces i wrote between 2000 and 2002, put them together in 2004. Enjoy, couldn't think of a better way to start. (Or maybe i am just too lazy to look :-))