Alone

By Alex Gorman

Artwork by Molly McGarvey

Founders’ note: Not everyone is born with the ability to use their voice. Not everyone can easily communicate their thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams. On this page, we’re give nonspeaking people in our community the opportunity to be heard. The authors are students at Mouth to Hand Learning Center in Mount Kisco. You can read about Mouth to Hand in the article “Force of Nature” on our website or in the September/October 2023 issue.

The cries of people crushed by sacred wrong

Echo among the vast and empty skies

I hear their tears, their cold and frozen sighs

Alone, alone

              They are alone inside.

My dreams are of stars dancing in the sun.

The power of the moon and night is gone.

Colors of kaleidoscopic thought

Drive away my terror of alone.

Alone, alone

             They are alone inside.

The waves attack the sharp and clinging sand

Which sticks together in a huddled mass.

They’re broken into single, tiny grains—

The power is the ocean, not the shore.

There are voices in the ocean’s roar

Questions swirl in eddies where tides sweep

They sing to all a song that wonders why

They are alone

              So so alone, inside.

Author’s note:

There are over 30 million nonspeakers (with autism alone) in the world. We are trapped inside bodies that don’t listen to our brains. Those few of us who have been taught to communicate by typing mourn our lost brethren. Because we have no means of communication, most of us will live and die without anyone ever really knowing us—without ever being seen. The loneliness is more than can ever be expressed: it is the complete and total isolation of millions of souls.

This article was published in the January/February 2026 edition of Connect to Northern Westchester.