No One

She purposed to need no one, not
love or thirst, not even sunrise
and the sweet amulets of water
that fall from the heavens.

No, she wanted to be an island
of self-sufficiency, to sleep
with her arms around her pillow,
a flower alone in damp woods
singing to herself
beneath her curling umbrella.

And this is how she lived for many years -
a solitary song, a soliloquy
spoken into a small mirror
that hangs beside the wash basin,
with its pink towel and basket of dead flowers.

But something remained wrong -
a dull ache whispered from below her voice
where her heart should have been. A seed
rumbled in the pit of her stomach, as if to suggest
a tree that had never grown, a stone skimming
the surface of water once and then sinking.

She grew old this way, never knowing
it had been need she had needed all along -
the sound of her own small voice
asking for a light to see by, a match
to retrieve her heart from the widening dark.