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 the calendar on the company work schedule,

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 and numbness

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 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 preoccupied

writing a prescription for Ritalin to a young boy with a busy brain

he has too much personality and not enough attention from his parents