Mid-Twenties

Seven times this week I’ve had
this conversation about loneliness—

crying to someone over a screen or
the phone. We just want to go

for beer, have friends who are
around, you know? And we’re famous

enough that the ex-lovers are writing
to say congrats, they always knew

we’d go places, and I’m trying hard
not to think about still living in a suite

full of bikes and other people’s sadness
and traffic and someone else’s cat and how

I’m meeting a woman from the Internet
yet again. Caffeine is making me edgy. I can’t

remember the last time I looked at someone’s
face over dinner. These are the new rules.

I’m not allowed to leave this party until
I talk to three people. I have to call someone

just to talk, which never happens anymore.

 

 


Leah.HorlickLeah Horlick lives on Unceded Coast Salish Territories in Vancouver, where she co-curates REVERB, a queer and anti-oppressive reading series. A 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, her writing has appeared in So To Speak, Canadian Dimension, GRAIN, Poetry is Dead, Plenitude, Adrienne, and on Autostraddle. She is the author of Riot Lung (Thistledown Press, 2012), and For Your Own Good (Caitlin Press, 2015).

 

 


 

Leah Horlick