Lonely
For when you feel like the only one.
I’m nobody! Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell! They’d banish us, you know.
In plain words
A small, funny poem about finding one other person who feels unseen too. The joke is in the arithmetic: the moment there are two of you, “nobody” becomes a club, with secrets and everything. Loneliness tends to say you’re the only one. The poem suggests one other person is enough to change the count.
Worth knowing
Published after her death, in 1891. Her editors smoothed her punctuation, so the dashes and capitals in her own handwritten version differ.
If something of your own is sitting heavy — /talk is a quieter room.
The quote is checked against the original text. The plain-words note is an AI-assisted draft. How AI is used