I’m staying drunk throughout the day.
Of course, it isn’t alcohol –
No beer, no shots, no desi stuff –
But worse than these on withdrawal.

I pour the whines of my past
Into my inadequacy:
Embellished and romanticized,
Into some epic fantasy.

I am the knight in armour who
Awaits the damsel in distress
To come and show him sympathy
For carrying all the heaviness.

“Oh look at me. My fate’s acursed.
My future’s ransomed for my past.
I could have been an emperor
Whose empires forever last.

“But all I have’s a shadowed mind,
An open sail that drags me back.
I dreamed of having bags of gold,
But all I have’s a lemon sack.

“Alas! My dreams will never be.
I have too much to deal with now.”
And on and on I pity on
Myself instead of thinking how –

Of how to find the strength in steel,
To thank the shadows for the shade,
The headwinds for the cooling sweat,
And lemons for the lemonade.