Loneliness is a drug, a narcotic; it grows through veins, through nerves and muscles; it assumes some right of possession over your body and mind; it feeds itself, and creates its own requirement. Loneliness and solitude are walls. ~ R. J. Ellory, A Quiet Belief in Angels

Just get away from it all
leads to alone, away from friends,
morphs into solitude, bides with solo,
yields isolation then single,
alone to lonely until…
anything else feels strange,
people drift away, perhaps sad
at friendship lost.
Loneliness becomes normal,
branding all else strange, bizarre,
until somehow a friend,
long known or yet a stranger,
breaks down the walls
showing lonely
as charlatan,
isolation as peculiar.