On Anxiety, Loneliness, and Battle Scars
Image by Ali Gabriella
On Anxiety
Oh there you are.
Didn’t think you left me
for good.
How could I survive
without your hands around my throat,
sinking your teeth into my thighs,
weighing me down?
Dragging me into the deep depths of your isolation,
where you drown me with your thoughts in the blackness,
where I am isolated.
I am suffocating from the
heavy mass production dictionary
full of criticisms you pile on me.
Shoving them down my throat,
forcing me to swallow, digesting
your twisted edition of the truth.
It is too much for me to stomach so I must heave it all up.
You hold me and tell me it will be alright.
I believe you,
while I lay in your arms dreaming of days you were gone.
Oh there you are.
Didn’t think you left me
for good.
On Loneliness
I didn’t know loneliness until it hit me with its loveliness,
until I was sitting on the floor of my bathroom,
cold and wet with the steam from the shower still hugging my body,
crying slick tears slippery sliding down to my chin,
incapable of catching my breath incompetent to calm my blood.
No one prepared me for the water truck coming my way,
until I was slammed against the steel,
bones crumbled from the pressure of the tank that compressed my body,
scattered like the shattered windows,
drowning in my darkness deadened by my own insecurities.
No one hearing my gasps for air or the water filling my lungs
until it was too late —
I didn’t know loneliness until it hit me with its loveliness,
until the ringing of laughter filled my ears,
the soreness of tight cheeks and widening of my lips,
the hip shaking hand clapping dance moves,
became familiar ever-present sticky-note reminders.
No one prepared me for the friendship coming my way,
until I saw sprouting of springing flowers,
the enriching episodes of creativity that spread throughout my brain,
roots stretching to all spaces empty,
overwhelmed with the beauty that I am being more than enough.
No one and everyone witnessing the evolution taking place here
can you see it?
Battle Scars
They are the white stripes on your badge of surviving a war,
the struggles shown from straying off path,
the lines to a shitty first draft.
They are the disillusioned truths telling you that life is unfair,
the failed attempts to practice self care,
the disbelief of your strength.
