If you eat all alone,

Roam and vibe alone. 

And, you share nothing with anyone,

No excitement, no happiness—

How is your day spent, or what else do you do with none – 

Then what do you name it?

Detachment,

or apathy?

Solitude or loneliness?

Is it strength labeled as empowerment?

Silk draped in a cotton handkerchief? 

Is it discipline simmered in silence?

Or is it a famine no one photographs—

A drought that happens in the middle of abundance?

I sit with my own shadow

as if it were a loyal guest in my shrine,

Here, the fork and spoon dance with my mood

The echo answers back with my devour.

There is no witness to my hunger

except the walls—

and even they are tired

of holding up my composure.

Solid yet sometimes brittle,

Layered into sediments of memoirs 

and longings for a future yet to be seen,

Or a beloved yet to be held close. 

They say independence tastes like iron—

like blood bitten back from the lip.

They say a woman alone at her table

is evolution,

is progress,

Is the final thesis of freedom.

But tell me—

When freedom becomes a room

where no one knocks,

When your laughter has no resistance

to bounce against,

When your good news evaporates

before it reaches a name—

Is it autonomy

Or exile?

I have built a republic of one.

No coups.

No compromises.

No one rearranges my thoughts

or interrupts my metaphors.

Yet some nights

My sovereignty feels like a dome

drawn too carefully—

A map that forgot

to include rivers.

I chose this serenity— 

I remind myself.

Chose the uncluttered bed,

The unshared plate,

The quiet silence that does not argue 

or impose control over my thoughts—

Doesn’t paraphrase my needs—

Once largely ignored,

Excluded from the sovereignty 

as if a precipitated outcome of devastated hope.

A longing for eternal pure love—

That never knocked on my door.

Instead came an unwelcomed intruder in my quiet.

A composure built after wars. 

But choice can be a tyrant.

It can whisper,

“You are safer this way.”

While gently confiscating

the possibility of warmth.

Perhaps loneliness is not the absence of people

but the absence of risk—

Risk of being seen and heard of,

Letting people into your boundary that you built with

electromagnetic wires after drone wars. 

No trembling confession,

No misread signals,

No fragile hope lay bare on the table

beside the plate. 

No uncertainties,

No hopes hanging on the walls,

No waiting period of broadcast.

And yet—

There is a fierce glow

in standing unaccompanied.

In earning your own sky 

and flying boundless in that skyline,

In not shrinking your hunger

to make someone else satiable.

Maybe this is not apathy.

Maybe this is a rehearsal—

a sacred interval

where the self grows bones

strong enough

to carry both solitude

and love.

So if I eat alone tonight

and share nothing with anyone—

no excitement, no happiness—

Do not rush to name it.

It could be loneliness.

It could be independence.

Or it could be a woman

learning the difference

between being untouched

and being whole.

It’s a season, not a lifelong sentence.

Even if it is, it’s breathable. 

Perhaps, not apathy, 

Maybe integration! 

Of self with experiences that speak 

louder than the crowd of anomalies once belittled. 

You are not performing for invisible approval. 

Or, flashy applause, 

Neither are you confusing chaos with chemistry, 

Intensity with intimacy,

Nor are you contained.

You are not bound to pounded hearts 

anymore that maneuver innocence. 

Solitude becomes restoration rather than repudiation. 

Your exile is your authorship now. 

The identity you write yourself,

You are not starving and feeding 

on crumbs once scattered for you— 

That was beyond your approval. 

Oh, such a distaste!

You have won a war that nobody sees. 

A war against an invisible cage, 

A cage of negligence, ignorance, nihilism

monitored by selfish crews—destined to overrule for a few decades. 

There is a phase when peace feels sacred, 

And, suddenly, solitude feels like abundance. 

Loneliness feels like protection.

And peace isn’t anymore a preference. 

It’s a nonnegotiable. 

No more erosion of the foundation, but expansion of my residence. 

The authorship of self-imposed solitude

Keeps every unwanted knocking on the door away! 

Your peace is your serenity that you protect earnestly… 

Fierce is your conviction amidst 

the fragility of depletion that preaches

you to remain open to every unnecessary change.

Here, you stand unhinged and unbothered with yourself!

©‌ Farheen Akter Bhuian Nancy 

Time Frame: 4.44 am, 23.2.26