Sobriety Sestina During COVID-19

you want to get away from yourself.
you tell yourself it’s because of all this, feeling
sure you are more sensitive than the rest of the world,
so you research all the ways to transform
and you become good at them. even disciplined.
you convince yourself you are alive,

even though you’re not certain what alive
really feels like. you don’t feel like yourself
when you aren’t drinking fucking, numbing. discipline
is stopping after two, then three, then five. feelings
fall away like your nice jeans, a button down, transforming
to a pile of hope on the floor. your whole world

is pussy, is a buzz, is a sense of power. the world outside
is on fire, is danger, is a fist. you’re not alive
unless you’re in charge, looking for a way to transform
into anything else, as long as it isn’t yourself.
you used to think you were just so good at feeling
your feelings, but since more therapy, you’re undisciplined

about sitting with instead of giving in. discipline
isn’t enough to keep you motivated. the world
wants you to stuff it all down, ignore your feelings,
turn yourself inside out convincing everyone you are alive
when you’re a shell, a hollow version of yourself.
you’re desperate. the more you drift, the more you transform

into someone unrecognizable. can you ever transform
back? can you stop? do you have enough discipline
to return to some former semblance of yourself
even though the addictions and desperations of the world
are so easy to indulge? do you want to be alive,
experience the ecstasy of the range of human feelings,

or knot? there is only one answer: feeling
everything, embracing, accepting, transforming
one thing into another through practice. aliveness
requires consciousness, not numbing, and not discipline
so much as kindness, softness, looking into the world
and accepting it all. there is a way to come home to yourself

hope is not a feeling, not a date outfit, but a discipline
we practice every day. it is possible to transform the world
by transforming yourself. I dare you to be fully alive.