The People You Didn't Choose

You didn't choose them. They were assigned to you by an algorithm of proximity and payroll— people whose last names you learned before their first, whose coffee orders you know by heart but whose middle names remain a mystery. Coworkers. The one who microwaves fish and feels no remorse. The one who replies-all to things that were clearly not for all. The one who says "Happy Monday!" and means it— actually means it— and you can't decide if that's beautiful or unhinged. But also: the one who noticed you were quiet on a Thursday and left a cookie on your desk with no note. The one who covered your shift when your mother was in the hospital and never mentioned it again. The one who laughed at your joke in the meeting when no one else did and that small loyalty got you through the afternoon. We spend more waking hours with these people than with the ones we chose— and somehow, impossibly, some of them become the ones we'd choose. Not all of them. Dave from accounting will never be invited to the wedding. But the rest— the ones who showed up every day to the same fluorescent trench and made it bearable, made it funny, made it almost worth it— those people are a kind of family that nobody writes poems about. Until now.