Never

Maybe you’re young and communal.
Maybe you’ve never lived alone.
Still, you must have some memory

Of yourself you share with no one.
Do you ever consider it
And wonder what renders it real?

That vivid moment in your room,
Up on the roof, out in the woods,
Wandering down an empty road—

That epiphany in the stall
Of a restroom where the light fell
From a high, grilled, tinted window

After school, no one at the sinks,
No one shouting out in the hall,
Just silence and sunlight, that’s all—

That sort of lonely memory,
That sort of memory detached
From company, which you must have—

What makes it real? No one can check,
Not even you. The solitude,
The thing you knew and never said.