*Disclaimer: I wrote this for my creative writing class at UVU. The prompt was to write a slam poem about something that scared you. Here's to fear.*
Here's my heart: a black hole capturing
every emotion I've ever felt and trapping it for eternity.
The demons living inside my bones are
constantly yanking on my heartstrings, begging me to collapse into
something just short of death, just short of a coffin filled with
flowers. Shake my ribcage, watch the panic roll off onto the street;
glitter and dust and memories.
Here's my hands: shaking and trembling
until I can't pick them apart from the trees shaking in the wind.
Anxiety takes those trembling hands, he
leads me in a slow dance across the floor until my feet go numb and I
can't move. Feel the pressure of perfection, feel the breath being
knocked out from your lungs, stolen.
Here's my soul: shattered and
continuously breaking into shards of fine china.
Darling, I know it's hard to understand
why I can't just let things go they way the world always does. The
bullets constantly being thrown at me don't disappear with the flick
of a wrist, or the weight of another day. Shoot me in the hips and
I'll collapse. Shoot me in the heart and I'll forget where I am.
God created me with a little too much
panic, a little too much anxiety.
Quick, breathe.
Inhale, exhale.
Inhale, exhale.
Inhale, exhale.
You'd think you'd never forget how to
survive. Clammy hands and worn out dancing feet, anxiety isn't going
home before midnight—he has no curfew. Anxiety isn't going anywhere
anytime soon, he's too caught up in the moment, too self-absorbed to
pay attention to anything else.
Good work, Anxiety, you've done it
again. You've pulled me under the current until I felt the pull of
the ocean stealing my sanity. Collapse, breathe, shake. What if I
can't get out this time?
You were the hallelujah.
xoxo,
rachel.
