Is there a pill
that targets negative thoughts
and isolates them
and erases them
from the skull?
Like a focused lobotomy
or a more specific variant of Eternal Sunshine
of the Spotless Mind?
Is there a way
that movie science
could be applied to my life?

I need to be heroic
so heroic that I don’t even think of it
as heroism
but just as a different way
to cross the street.
I want to be effortlessly brave
and handsome
or at least believe that I’m handsome.
I want to trick myself
into optimism.

Does modern technology
offer any insight into this issue:
with pinpoint lasers
or genetic engineering
or micro-specific alternate reality shifts?

There’s got to be something that helps.
Just give me the pill
that provides happiness
– and make it retroactive
for the last thirty years.