The difference between emptiness
and absence is the difference

between happiness and vice.
Like a group text, one informs

the other. Like an ovarian cyst,
inside one is the other. But not

as a debt but as an invader,
a malevolent congregant,

snacking with false benevolence
on the confident host from within.

Bill Yarrow, Professor of English at Joliet Junior College and an editor at Blue Fifth Review, is the author of The Vig of Love, Blasphemer, Pointed Sentences, and five chapbooks, most recently We All Saw It Coming. He has been nominated eight times for a Pushcart Prize. Against Prompts, his fourth full-length collection, is forthcoming from Lit Fest Press in October 2018.