All Solitude

by Sean Hewitt

Tonight it didn’t take much drink

Before the world started spinning.

Along with a pulsing headache

Came out words before time to think,

An uncontrollable grinning

At some blundering, drink-fuelled mistake

And out of the bar on the wet

Pavement, more come falling out

Of wide, dark, bouncer-guarded doors

All running just in time to get

The last train home, back about

Familiar rooms and messy floors.

On a building are words, bony

Above stark posters for strip-clubs

6.9 million people live

Alone in Britain. Are you lonely?

And as more come out of the pubs

Arm in arm, leaning in to give

One last goodnight kiss to new friends,

My eyes focus, the carousel

Stops. Those graffitied, scarring words

Have chiselled some self-blunted ends,

Shocked me into sobriety,

Left me stumbling across the curbs.

Sean Hewitt is a 17 year old poet from Cheshire who is currently studying A-Levels with aspirations to become a full-time writer post-university.