Being alive
is probably better than being
dead, but it’s hard to appreciate
that difference when everyone
is in love and you’re not,
and you have to go to work
being unloved
and you have to think
about what to eat
to continue living throughout
this lack that accompanies you
to house parties where lovers
lounge all over furnishings
with nowhere for you
and your lack to go
except a corner in the kitchen
where you drink
and wonder
if in 20 years’ time
there’ll be such abundance
that lack will be
like the friend
who stopped speaking to you
at the beginning of high school.
She didn’t give her reasons
so you were left to assume
it was because
you were what she wasn’t
and she was what you weren’t.
Cassandra Moss’s work has also appeared in Spectra Poets. She is the author of Unstoppable Utopia.