The Come Up

In the dark of night,
I saw the light of day,
it was behind me,
and out of reach,
but if I said that earlier,
they would have shot me,
shot me down good,
and they would have beat my skull in to remind me that optimism was not,
in fact,
in the zeitgeist,
and they would have trolled me to let me know that smiling was a weakness,
or that it would be,
and one day,
not today,
but one day,
at dusk,
I would laugh my drunken self to sleep---