I'm told I seem happy now, but I never wasn't.

Never's a strong word, but at least recently. I've been happy for a while.

I'm told I seem happy in that no-chill way that one enacts happiness.

It's not false.

A white man in the body of a wise woman once said to a talking horse,

"There's no such thing as deep down, just what you do."

But that's bullshit, there is.

It's the fire to the smoke.

You know what comes next.

You fill yourself up with happiness until it's bursting out of the seems.

It's like a needle, there has to be so much that some leaks out before you know you have enough.

But then the seems come apart, and you're stretched out and tired.

Just tired.

You lay there doing nothing, wishing you were hungry enough to get up and eat.

Only when that passes do you feel grief.

Only then, when the you've got a moment to stitch up your seams and reflate your body and get up and go run.

Only after all that do you have the energy to remember that people are dead, and you inherited their splendor.

And you sit, tragic and beautiful in a dress of skulls that you can't show to anyone.

And to avoid showing anyone, you fill yourself up with grief.

Until you're bursting at the seams.

The man who said that the commons was a tragedy recanted.

The "Unmanaged Commons" was the tragedy, he said.

The people we know live inside our heads.

And there's no one to manage us.