Solitude is
An olive grove
Slender, tapering leaves, silvery-sage
The austerity of a sweet-salty day
without singular gasps of wind,
but an even sigh;
And the silence --
not the empty kind,
not the suppressed-and-wriggling kind,
not the stifling, cough-echoing-through-the-library kind,
not the sterile, anesthetized kind,
but the silence of settled thoughts
dividing cells
lunar language.
Katie Mannheimer attends Steller Alternative School in Anchorage.
