Learned Happiness

Two years of reteaching
my serotonin synapses:
fire now, do not let the neurons
reabsorb you just yet. I fed
them balanced meals, ninety
milligrams every night
until I had enough chemicals
in my head to reteach myself
how to smile and mean it.

When my doctor told me
I could stop taking the pills,
it was like my father
letting go of my bike —
no more training wheels,
only a hope for balance.

My limbs get too heavy
to drag out of bed. I could
claim lack of sleep, but I live
with the word relapse pressed
into my hands.
I open my skull,
parse through tangles of neurons:
Is this just sadness or
a lack of chemical reactions?

Happiness is not
like riding a bike:
You can forget.

Hannah Dellabella graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with degrees in creative writing and professional writing. She lives in Bayonne, New Jersey, and is very aware of her Jersey accent. Her work has previously appeared in jmww, Seltzer, and the Of Sand and Sand anthology by Kind of a Hurricane Press. She is a compulsive imaginer.