Nights Spent Triumphantly Alone

What is failure, exactly?
Like success, it’s slippery.
Also, it needs narrative.

Unhappiness, suffering,
Injury, illness, defeat—
Any creature can know those,

But failure needs a story
About the competition,
About what counts as success,

About effort, about shame,
About good and wickedness.
To truly fail you must fail

By someone else’s standards,
In someone’s good opinion.
No one can fail on their own.