Living is merely dying for the optimist.

So if I make mistakes a growing trend-

like losing you, loving you, meeting you- it

shouldn’t matter much in the end.

I guess I’ll just work utilising the

impuissant intervals of interest I can

rally the strength to muster and the degree

I once prized and had underpin every plan.

I may meet some other dislike-minded

failure, and settle into a marriage and home

of convenience, mutual recognition of last chances

and rising fears of being alone.

I’ll raise the children led to believe

that Mummy and Daddy were born husband and wife,

the same children named after crossing off

the ones earmarked in and for a happier life.

I’ll live in the same town I grew hope in,

and stifle the restlessness I tendered as truth,

whilst passing off Paris, London and the Elbow Rooms

as the improbable pipe dreams of youth.

Then I’ll die in a blaze of Usual Tuesdayness,

convincing myself I had lived half-well,

but deep down I’d rue I never knew happiness

like the sort once brought by my February Belle.