I pull out my plastic pill case

and see my life laid out before me,

the days delineated,

filled with cute tiny tablets like rabbit turds

and oversized horsepills that smell like alfalfa,

all in that uniquely muted spectrum of colors

found only in science, being too false for nature.

I’m told, one must accept this imposed deceleration

and embrace equilibrium: a fuzzy clinical Swiffer

mopping up motes of mania and depression.

This is, after all, what we say we are seeking,

my shrink and I –

the goalpost I stumble towards,

a sort of middle ground, no extremes,

a safe someplace, a fantasy of functioning,

free of danger, without harm.

I acquiesce to acceptable apathy;

capitulate, adopt a paler shade of beige,

entering, at last, into that homeostatic void.

My doctor tells me this is what it means to be happy.