Single on Singles Awareness Day and un-
aware, I scrolled through meme after meme
of loners at parties and tables for two with one,
but never the acronym.It's SAD, they don't have to say to say, a disease:
My clinic offered S INGLES SHOTS.
At church we're listed with shut-ins and refugees
as Those Kept In Our Thoughts.But what commuter in February rain
is not a refugee, alone,
and straining through frosted glass to see the lane
that's theirs but not their own?In warmth at home through every page I read
and write exploring in aloneness,
God's restoring me. I've all I need --
the dog in my lap, a bonus.
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The first two stanzas of this poem were set by February 16; the others took three more weeks to write down and were 40 years in the making. No one - not Mom, not Dad, not the singles group at church - have ever believed that I enjoy living alone.
Besides, I contended with my hero, Broadway songwriter Stephen Sondheim. His lyric "Being Alive" expresses the negatives of being with someone before he flips it: Alone is ... not alive. For the movie Dick Tracy he wrote "Live Alone and Like It": On your own with only you to concern yourself / doesn't mean you're lonely, just that you're free. Even Sondheim undercuts the lyric as the song accompanies a montage that shows the title character falling in love. Even Stephen. - WSS
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