My Happiness

I found my happiness.

On my own

In terms that resonate in fractals years bent inward

Beaming in a testament to what I have chosen

There is nothing, but how one reacts

I found my happiness

Underneath my anger

I would tell myself I am not mad at her anymore or him or it

There was the initial male rivalry of older brother

Physical and submission to muscles that do not push back

In a strand lesson of Catholic masochism

Of who takes turn the other cheek literally

Pummeled and spat crack toothed

Blame for bicycling into prohibited territory

Thinking to break rules was to invite destruction

Like swallowing glass heated beyond stability

A dish of cauliflower in the oven puffed hemispheres with rosemary

Exploding upon placement on the counter

Shards catapulted into the crannies of the kitchen floor

Slicing feet and smiling that this is what one chose

To heat the oven keep the cell walls broiling into adolescence

To marriage, to divorce, to eight years of holding single fatherhood

Until the fire burns anyone that attempts to come close

To say I am trying to help

I found my happiness

In recognizing I was mad at me

I was angry at myself for not being better at the social game

Or figuring out there was a margin for error, but you have to take it

No one can give it to you, but yourself

If you are angry at anyone else

You are not.  You are only angry at yourself

For feeling like you failed at preventing the pain or acquiring the pleasure

Your perception led you to believe was ideal or warranted

And you are the byproduct of this perception

Hardened in years of attempting to stare people in the eye when they ask

How come you can’t be happy?

Depression sits on the shelf like two inches of whiskey at the bottom of the bottle

That reappears each morning in a Sisyphean endurance binder

That no matter what you suck up, that solution returns

Brown and odious for you to contemplate on how to be better

And one day you realize vulnerable and sober

That it is ok to live, that you need to give yourself a break

Quit being mad at yourself for this impossible standard

You would never hold anyone else to and in that pocket of acceptance in the now

I found my smile, teeth missing and beaming to say good morning

On the street passing up the forlorn heaviness of self-contempt

That I am worthy of my happiness and no one,

Not even me, has the right to take it away

I choose, I choose to love me, to be happy 

Nothing changed, but perception; I am still alone 

But I love myself in a way people approaching me might emulate 

Instead of the anger at myself I projected onto them bringing forth repellent

That I somehow did not deserve to be giving circumspection 

Beyond the immediate and in this self-liberation 

I am alive like laughter in a smile 

Kindled in solemn appreciation of existence