If only...

The girl sat in the middle of a busy room:

All around her, the people she called "friends"
worked, talked and laughed.
They were all engrossed in their own little worlds,
formed in circles of twos and threes.

The girl looks around;
      confused, And a little frightened.
She wanted to reach out,
    to touch,
        to feel she belonged to the worlds of the people around her;
To feel that she belonged in somebody's world…

She was not alone…yet she was alone.

The girl then smiled a brilliant smile,
willing to push away the dark thoughts that threatened to engulf her.
She enters their conversation
    knowing as she did so that in reality,
nothing and nobody in these worlds belonged to her.

The girl sits in the middle of the busy room,
   pretending to smile,
      yet shaking inside,
while her mind chanted the two words
         "if only"
Over
   and over again…