stranger in poetry

you know you've hit your nadir
when you start doubting your own memory
when the good parts of the past
seem like delusions or illusory
or compounded with interest
from the bad ways they all ended
and time's hidden fees
all amount to usury

I know I've hit my bottom
when the old good times all feel like fakes
like they're all just stories I told myself
until I started to believe they were true myself
just a couple of years
that's all that it takes was it all a rich life once?
or was it all just imagined
in a psychotic break

look I can't know
you can't know either
history makes us strangers to ourselves
the passage of time
and imperfect memory
make us strangers to ourselves