Laughs and Lobotomies

Sometimes I wonder

If I hallucinated the first 34 years of my life

Or the last 2?

How can any of it be real?

Or maybe I’m still trapped in the bell jar

And slowly running out of air

When the truth is stranger than fiction

How do you convince yourself?

Do you pinch your arm to wake from the nightmare?

Or go to sleep and hope things will look different in the light of dawn?

Or stare, howling at the moon, all sense lost?

Or do you just turn it off and on again?

Am I a toy that can be reset?

A novel that can be rewritten?

A story to be untold and retold with a happier ending?

I don’t know.