Running into a fellow alum
Fake a smile when your eyes meet,
when they spot you grabbing baked beans
or browsing the KPOP section on Spotify.
So what’re you doing now?
Don’t say ‘unemployed’, say ‘checking out my options’;
Don’t say ‘still single’, just say ‘waiting for the right person’;
Don’t say ‘depressed’, say that ‘you’ve been a little lonely’.
Soak the words spoken in a brown-sugar bath bomb,
tell them you’re on Instagram, too (even though you rarely check it).
Try to avoid politics or religion as the rusty rails of the T bump.
No one wants to know that the moment you threw the tasseled cap
you also threw away the best days of your life.
Morgan Boyer (she/her) is the author of The Serotonin Cradle (Finishing Line Press, 2018), and a graduate of Carlow University. Boyer has been published in Kallisto Gaia Press, Thirty West Publishing House, Pennsylvania English, and Oyez Review. She lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her family.
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