To Be Held By Someone At Night
By Sam Hendrian
Getting up and getting dressed
Is easy enough
Even when the rain
Suggests more pain than gain.
But midway through the third act
When the sun goes on honeymoon
A lack of oxygen
Is noticed between the chest and arms.
It’s an unacknowledged need
To be held by someone at night,
To cap off an empty bottle of time
With the promise of eternal warmth.
Wine and weed and fantasies
Have reached the limit of their placeholder power,
Causing a tingling sensation
Then evaporating like post-shower condensation.
Echoed on the trains and on the sidewalk corners
Where a variety of nobodies
Wait for their shivering bodies
To be held by someone at night.
Sam Hendrian is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and poet striving to foster empathy through art. More work can be found on Instagram at @samhendrian143.
