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      February 27, 2025The Creak of LonelinessDorit d'Scarlett

      The leg drapes like a story half-told,
      bare ankle, sock sagging,
      a loose thread of someone who once stayed longer than they meant to.
      The couch leans too, tired of holding.
      Its fabric—floral ghosts in red and blue—
      sighs beneath the weight of afternoons spent waiting.
      Once it was new. Now it belongs to silence.
      The walls hum faintly with forgotten noise,
      a static of old laughter, scuffles,
      the clink of a glass placed down too hard.
      No one names it loneliness,
      but the dust on the corner of the armrest
      tells a different kind of history.
      There’s comfort in the softness of ruin—
      in the way a worn chair fits a body
      like the outline of a lost map.
      Outside, the world might spin itself raw,
      but here, even the creak of springs is familiar,
      a voice reminding you: you’ve already been forgotten.
      Image: “Etching with Chine Colle III” by Michael Thompson. “The Creak of Loneliness” was written by Dorit d’Scarlett for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, January 2025, and selected as the Editor’s Choice.

      from Ekphrastic Challenge

      Comment from the series editor, Megan O'Reilly

      “As soon as I read ‘The Creak of Loneliness,’ it struck me that perhaps what’s most about affecting [artist name]’s piece is the history it implies. The yellowed wallpaper, the worn couch, the smudged wall—it all feels like a whispered echo of a life long past. The single, disembodied leg is the viewer’s only link to a living present, a ‘story half-told.’ I love the way the poem personifies the parts of the room, imagining their tired yearnings and haunted memories. The idea of their being ‘a comfort in the softness of ruin’ seems so true to the image, which does seem to portray a sort of bleak coziness. Still, the overall tone here is emptiness, and it’s a sense that lingers, reminding us that what once was new, now ‘belongs to silence.’”

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