one time a teenage girl fell into a hospital bed
with serotonin levels so low
they scraped the ground when she walked
she felt desolated and numb
as she traced her fingertips along her dry skin
and instead of a support sling for her serotonin, or rehabilitation,
the doctor shoved two tiny pills down her throat to cure the sadness
because she wasn't quite crazy enough
not crazy enough to fill her emptiness up with anything
besides futile prescription pills and a “perk up, sweetie”
from the subservient nurse

one time a man decided to take 8 days off from work
to help his mother
sometimes she thought she was famous and sensational, other times
she thought she was a minimum-wage grocery bagger at Walmart
when he noted his schedule on the company work calendar,
his unconcerned boss fired him
he told him that his mother's numerous personalities weren't crazy,
not crazy enough for him to miss work for the same amount of days
that it takes the military to spend enough to end world hunger

one time a man went to prison for the third time in a year
he was addicted to escaping reality
during one of his lucid hours of withdrawal,
he decided his influx in bodily fluids and intense irritability
was obnoxiously distracting to the man
trying to hang himself from his ceiling next door
he turned in a request form again to seek help from outside the Shoe
but the prison guard slipped his paperwork back through his cubby hole
they told him drug addiction wasn't a mental illness,
that he wasn't crazy enough to be let out of his cage

one time the empty girl with deficient serotonin levels
and a bottomless bottle of Effexor
forgot to share
she tipped the bottle back and chugged the whole thing
her mother found her pale body laying serenely on her red bedspread,
cuts so far down her arms you would have mistaken them for a long-sleeved shirt
the doctor wasn't available for comments, as he was too busy
writing a prescription for Ritalin to a young boy with a busy brain
with too much personality and not enough attention from his parents