They say fake it till you make it in NA.  I’ve never been. Just been told by an NA faker. But it’s become mainstream. Not the NA faker, the saying. My audiologist says it. Even my husband. So I fake it. I fake it every waking minute. I clap-chant If you’re happy and you know it…, and sing-sway to Des’ree’s You Gotta Be. Still, I’m left with a reservoir of minutes for faking it. So every day I go to a café and order an oat milk magic, extra hot, and pull out my red Moleskine with wonder woman on the cover and write poetry. Or edit poetry. Or piss-fart around, faking I’m a poet. Then I’ll order a turmeric latte, so I’m worth the space. But that’s an expensive faking-it habit. So most days I finish up after the coffee, and call my mother. Or a friend. Or the NA faker. And when faking it feels like faking it, I mind-holiday in Schitt’s Creek. I’ve been faking it for months. And you’d think it’d get easier. But on some days, even when I’ve worn out all my faking-it tools, reality insists on showing up, and I fade into a ghost who wants to flee from a tomb through a chink under its heavy lid, but something in me keeps on faking it, because it knows one day I won’t need to fake anything.

Lesh Karan

Note: NA is Narcotics Anonymous.

 

Lesh Karan was born in Fiji, has Indian genes and lives in Melbourne. She is a former pharmacist turned poet. Lesh’s work has been published in American Writers Review, Australian Multilingual Writing Project, Australian Poetry Anthology 2020, Cordite and Unusual Work.

Listen to Lesh reading Fakin it (2:11)

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