"Normality"

Sometimes...
I want to be 'normal'
As in...
Being a lonely middle-aged bloke
Who can walk into
A Wetherspoons
And order my
Cheap pint of lager
Sit in the corner alone
Pretend to be happy enough
Reading my paper
Minding my own business
Lost to the world
Drinking pint
After pint
After pint
Ad nauseam. 
Pretending to be happy.
But if I did that
I would be dead by now.
So instead
I am content
To exist as I do
Still a lonely
Middle-aged man
Sitting in a Wetherspoons
But supping
Orange and lemonade
NO ICE
Perusing a poetry magazine
And happy just to be
Sober and alive.

Dulwich Poet 13th May 2017

(I jotted this down earlier today while having a pint of orange and lemonade in a Wetherspoons in Farringdon, I have been sober since 2002, yet still look wistfully at 'ordinary drinkers'...)