By Maria Cohut
She takes what she can get,
however it may come: in snatches,
pity offerings, misplaced compliments
meant for others, more beautiful.
When they say “I will miss you”
she believes them –
for a while. Beyond that, there is life
with its lacks and losses,
mornings spent pretending
she is too busy to return the call,
evenings wasted in hot baths and takeaway
and so on until
the next smile she allows herself to misread.
Maria Cohut is a writer, independent researcher, and science communicator based in Brighton, U.K. Her writing has appeared in the Haiku Journal, The Found Poetry Review, Eunoia Review, and Doll Hospital Journal, among others. She also blogs about life and her love of all things bizarre at Encyclopaedia Vanitatum. On Twitter, she can be found @mariascohut.