A Soliloquy for Midnight
By Dave
The hour arrives, its inevitability a construct of human design,
A culmination of moments accumulated, discarded, forgotten.
The world beyond these walls erupts in orchestrated euphoria,
Yet within, the quiet hum of solitude persists, unyielding.
No intersubjective connection interrupts the stillness here,
No lips poised to exchange the intimacy of fleeting certainty.
Instead, the absence becomes palpable—a negative space
Defined not by the kiss withheld, but by its foregone impossibility.
How curious, this ritual of longing,
To seek affirmation at the stroke of midnight
As though love or connection might materialize
Within the prescribed confines of temporal markers.
And yet, the mind lingers on the notion,
Examining its contours with clinical detachment:
The neural pathways of desire,
The sociocultural weight of expectation.
Tonight, I am the sole observer of my existence,
The subject and object of a thesis unwritten.
Perhaps the conclusion lies not in what is absent,
But in the reclamation of this quiet autonomy.
Here, in this liminal space of reflection,
I resolve not to mourn what never was,
But to embrace the possibilities of what may yet be
As the new year unfolds, uncharted and unclaimed.