2010/loneliness

The television show
says loneliness is
a signal,
like hunger.
But hunger doesn’t
lend such shame,
feeling like the girl
left against the wall
at the dance,
in an ill-fitting dress
that was her mother’s
idea. And her mother
never had good ideas,
(even later in life)

Though hunger too disgraces
if it extends past lunch.
It’s the chronic nature
of these things that
wears at us, just
as chronic illness does.
The lack of hope,
the unrelenting,
unrepenting
thing we can neither
change nor escape.
It’s a shame we have
to feel such shame
for pain.

The way she used to say
I was hungry then,
meaning broke, poor,
desperate, in need –
suffering from lack.
You get the idea, I’m sure.
The kind of thing that
means the suit’s not right,
or is it your shoes,
or your voice that belies
the fear, the hunger.
So you don’t get the job,
because you need it.
Who knows if you qualified
or not. Need scares
them off, a scent that
is picked up, that gets
you picked off from the herd
early.

3/24/10