Sestina About Hangovers For a 25-Year-Old From a Person Over 40
You told me you had a hangover
But you are really just a youth
You don’t understand failure
You don’t truly understand the demoralization of having been wasted
And waking up to utter misery
Wondering if there’s any point to being alive
You are still in a reality where you think water, or bacon, might make you feel alive
Might make your hangover
And your misery
Give way to your resplendent youth
And within minutes of properly hydrating you will cease to be sorry you got wasted
As you bid farewell to failure
I am afraid of bowing to failure
As I try to explain to you what it’s like to not want to be alive
Just because you got wasted
And have a hangover
Or perhaps I resent you for your extreme youth
And elementary comprehension of misery
Actually I have no idea what you think of misery
Or failure.
I have no idea what your relationship is to your youth
What’s it’s like you be you, experiencing being alive
With your toy hangover
The result of having gotten wasted
With so little understanding perhaps of the horrible reasons we get wasted
Of the true though largely theoretical depths of your misery
Which when you are older are refracted through a hangover
which when large enough creates a sensation that failure
Is endemic not only to you but to all those alive.
But since you are a youth
And youth
is wasted
on the barely alive
and their toy misery
that makes sport of failure
as it ducks every hangover
In conclusion: just focus on staying alive. Big breakfast your way out of misery.
Ignore me and your youth. Get wasted.
Enjoy for these waning instants the failure of your hangover.
Previously: Sestina For an Annoying Publicist
Photo via rogerss1/flickr.
Sarah Miller is the author of Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn and The Other Girl. She lives in Nevada City, CA. Follow her on Twitter @sarahlovescali.