measuring up; measuring out

who is to say
what your life is worth.
how will you measure it?
in friends or lovers?
in tears or death?
where shall we go
looking for meaning?
long abandoned
divorced, you had said.
something about
irreconciliable differences.

meanwhile people gasp
and grasp at straws
crawling in desperation.
not for them your cynicism
your ingratitude.
they had aspirations and grief
they had sunrises and star lit skies
and lost them all.for someone else's whim.

elsewhere you continue to sit
in sanitised walled in rooms
blithely watching news
of autumnal shedding
of another kind.
you hear of expected ends
to unconventional stories,
loud proclamations of misfortune,
and unthinkingly go to bed.

but for once as you sleep
you are like them.
with neither dreams nor tomorrow
to look forward to.