Loneliness, Scott Cohen

Loneliness
by: Scott Cohen

Here I am, alone in my room, feeling lonely. 
Loneliness is horrible. This is an objective 
statement. Sometimes I think to objectify 
something means to isolate myself from it. 
Sometimes when I’m alone I think of you. 
You do not seem the type that is ever alone. 
I don’t feel like watching television or 
listening to the radio. There’s no one 
around to visit. I think I may read Genet’s 
Our Lady of the Flowers a bit later. I owe 
Jack a letter but I don’t feel like writing 
one now. I’m sure that right now, at this 
very moment, thousands of people are feeling 
pretty lonely. The knowledge of this is not 
very consoling. I have read about lots of 
famous men who have spent their lives in 
solitude. This isn’t very consoling either. 
I wonder if there really is something con- 
soling to a lonely man. That is, besides 
another person. To distract myself I’ve 
written out the line “In the abalone shell 
lives the abalone.” I’m not sure what an 
abalone is except that it has the word 
“alone” in it and sounds just like “lonely.”
It must really be lonely inside the abalone 
shell. This is not an objective statement. 
I once read that if you think long enough 
about something, you yourself start to take 
on the characteristics of that thing. Maybe 
I should think of a crowd having a great time.
But I am thinking about you again. We are
having a great time, only I’m feeling sentimental.
I’m willing to bet the abalone is not 
a very sentimental animal. Webster’s New 
World Dictionary lists an abalone as a sea 
mollusk with an oval shell perforated along 
the rim and lined with mother-of-pearl. The 
word preceding abalone in Webster’s is abaft, 
which is the rear or stern of a ship. I 
already know the lonely feeling one gets 
aboard a ship, standing at the stern, late 
at night, watching the stars drift by. Two 
words down from abalone is the word abandon.