Walls

We built walls around us and called it privacy -
but walls are thicker than we give them credit for,
I can sit here and live a world my own
while you can be two metres away in a different one -
Think of our proximity, our distance, both, simultaneously.

If you were losing faith in your room, blanketed in silence,
and I was losing love in mine, letting touch trickle to nothing,
I would never know you, your faith, your loss, your hurt,
and you never mine, my loss, my love, my hurt.

You could have needed me to prop your soul with words,
with a joke, a story, a shared moment of each knowing the other,
and I could have needed you to bandage my heart with hugs,
with a hand, chocolate, and remind each other of human blood, skin, eyes -
meant to embrace more than empty, self or thought.

Ensconced in our walls, however, how are we supposed to hear
when the other breaks? Or see when they fall? Or feel the hurt
of all lost, all packed tight into corners, locked in drawers,
contained behind doors?
Two metres, two worlds, or maybe still only one, and another one,
fearing the day when our walls are taken away.