Life is a no-win situation,
at least when, wrapped in a blanket, wearing two cardigans, I fight
the cold and my own words.

At first, I didn’t mean the inevitability of death
(mortality is actually a silver lining so few can appreciate),
but our innate, boredom-inducing insatiability—the mother of all vices,
or at least many of them.

But then the Irishman said, ‘Something will be mine wherever I am,’
and it struck me that after all these years and places,
one thing has never left me—my guilt.