One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

Ashish Kumar Singh

Because, why not? Why imagine him sad when

we can imagine him happy if imagine is what we have to do?

Now I remember a friend I haven’t seen or spoken to since

my school days, and in my remembering, I imagine him

in ecstasy—his head thrown so far back that laughter escapes

the tunnel of his throat as freely as water through ridges.

Camus says, Sisyphus is happy because he is hopeless.

Because he has no past and no imaginable future. But who

is that free? Who can say their shoulders are as weightless

as a baby born yesterday? I know I can’t, and I’m only 24.

I’m burdened with love and with the absence of love.

My mother kisses my forehead and says, May you live

for 100 years, and I promise her, I’ll try. I live,

if not for myself, then for her. Because how selfish to live

only for oneself. How lonely is such a life? I’m so loved

that I have no boulder to push in this lifetime,

no dreams or aspirations to fulfil except my own.

When filled with worry, my mother reminds us that life

can be as simple as waking up everyday to watch the sun rise

and to witness the sun set. Meaning, she fears we might

choose not to wake up one day. Mother, fear not;

if living is an obligation, then I oblige.

ASHISH KUMAR SINGH (he/him) is a queer Indian poet with a Master’s Degree in English Literature. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Wales, The Stinging Fly, Frontier Poetry, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Fourteen Poems, The Texas Review, Atlanta Review, Foglifter Press, Diode Journal, and elsewhere. Currently, he is a PhD candidate at University of Lucknow.