Alone

Door by door, you're passing me by, laughing and crying into ears that aren't listening; and I'm sitting inside, all alone.
Because you could open me up. Yes, it takes depth of character and years' experience to get it down right; we're all drunk on our own insecurities, howling in pain underneath pristine exteriors, crawling around amid the shambles of our feelings searching for something to sell to a consumer economy. But just stop a minute, and listen carefully: I'm here to meet you, as torn-up by the world as the world is by itself; I'm standing just on the other side, waiting for the slightest insinuation, a faint falter from the heights of your indifference—a slip of the censor, a prick of the hidden tenderness. Knock, friend, ever so quietly; place your palm on the knob, and I'll let you in.
God, how it hurts to see the world place you back on the rack. Society’s education is to learn to see oneself through the eyes of others, who have been taught the same thing. And the murderous insight of the unschooled is the realization of the system’s insistence on mandating who you are and then condemning you for it.
Where does all this come from? Hurt feelings, naturally. I don’t know if I’ve ever been slightly understood by anyone (I really don’t), but today the person who I had imagined as catching a scent of my simmering essence, who caught a glimmer of my movement in his periphery, and for whom I had crumpled up so many lonely hopes—today that person refused to see me as I actually am. Some stranger said something that alerted him to a coincidence, a condemned eccentricity in my character—and I watched from the ground as he went flying around the corner, having tripped over my wasted faith as he ran. Held his breath, afraid of the quarantine. I watched the curtain fall over his eyes.
The world is a vampire, ain’t that the damned truth. And I sigh as I hear the heckling of those who love me unconditionally, enraged at the use of a dirty word.