Hannah Shea is a writer living in Ithaca, NY. She holds a BFA in Animation and Illustration with a minor in Creative Writing.  Some of her previous work has been published in the Medical Literary Messenger.

Loneliness

I’m afraid of loneliness
I keep it bolted to the floor
in the corner of my mind
an old, rusty wood chipper
I throw my friendships
and interactions at it
to satisfy the hunger aches
and it devours everything
its teeth shred my oxytocin
its flails pulverize my memories
my grandfather tells me
I can lose a hand if I reach
into its jaws to clear an obstruction
so I keep my distance
if I’m diligent with my friendships
the rattles and crunches
settle into a rhythm
but I don’t want to be like my mother
somewhere along the way
her chipper got stuck
she tells me she doesn’t really know
how to be a good friend
or how to keep a friendship going
and when she reached in
the flails caught her fingers
there was no one left
to hear her screams
and crunching bones
the bloodied stump unsettles me
it tells me I will be no different
my mother’s suffering
is warm on my fingers
it drips into my chest
her isolation rings in my ears