How Do You Feel Happiness?

Good Doctor?

How do you feel happiness?
Like a fishhook in the cheek,
The tell tale BANG of gasses rapidly exiting a barrel,
a trick of the hand before the sting.
Like the first inhale of a joint—
sharp, electric, a little bit holy,
until the burn kicks in.

How do you feel happiness?
Like a goddamn joke,
the punchline always landing too late,
the laugh track rolling before I catch the setup.
Like a house built on sand,
like a sugar-spun web,
like the taste of something sweet
just before your teeth crack.

How do you feel happiness?
I used to fake it—
Jesus Christ, I was good.
Could tap dance bare—footed on broken glass with a smile,
could wear it like a well-cut dress,
tits juicy in a push up bra.
I could make you believe
I bled glitter and shit confetti.

How do you feel happiness?
I don’t, not right away.
Not until it’s a fossil, a relic white poop from some mutt in the 90s.
not until it’s run it's course in half-lifes.
The isotopes seem to say:
yes, I was happy there,
yes, it was real,
yes, it didn’t bite me back.

How do you feel happiness?
I double down on nature,
on dirt-under-the-nails ,honesty
on things that don’t lie.
Red skies, storm warnings,
a bird that shits on your windshield—
no fucking illusions,
no bait-and-switch.

How do you feel happiness?
Maybe I don’t. Maybe it’s all
a carnival trick, a baited trap.
But maybe—just maybe—
it’s not a house of candy,
not a witch’s laugh,
not a trick at all.
Maybe it’s just a fleeting thing
that doesn’t need to last to count.

Maybe I don’t have to believe in it,
to let it in.

XoXo some woman, somewhere, probably.

Physicians note—

“You see, Officer, she was always a morose child.”

This was the testimony given in a moment of great distress, the words issued with the certainty of a formal diagnosis, by the subject's mother. A dominutive small shouldered thing with manic eyes that seems to say you should probably watch your drink.

Accompanying this declaration was a photograph—an artifact of early childhood—depicting the subject, age six, upon the lap of an Easter Bunny, her countenance devoid of prescribed joy. It was presented as evidence, as if gloom were congenital, a condition inked upon the soul before one has the words to refute it.

The affliction, if it can be so named, has not abated with age. Happiness, for the subject, does not present itself in real time but is instead recognized posthumously, like a distant star whose light is only visible long after its death. There is a tendency toward honesty so severe it borders upon compulsion, a trait perhaps evolved as a corrective for the early propensity for deception. A survival skill the subject has no use for she has since committed herself to ridding herself of anyone's company she would feel the need to do that with anyway. She favors the company of trees to men, citing nature’s violence as, at the very least, honest.

The subject remains skeptical of joy, treating it as one might a rare and suspect tonic—best tested on another before ingestion. The prognosis is indeterminate, though further observation may yet yield some clarity.

Additionally I would also like to include another authors work, a happier side of the realist coin. Thank you for sharing this with me,

By c. Rommial Butler ✨🍻