If you can't let go easily,
maybe you should be the one to have your bags ready;
packed with a spare ticket on you.

If you can't stop looking at the door that was closed,
maybe you should not have built one
and lived all your life in a home
with no doors and windows.

If the same wound of yours,
bleeds and bleeds,
and the pain never stops
maybe you should not have showed up the points
where you're most vulnerable.

if your skin is paper thin, keeping nothing out,
but never confining your lights in,
maybe you should not have befriended storms
people exhaling fumes.

If you delve in the emotions too deep,
and get high on how low you feel,
maybe you should not have been a poet at all.

If you never wanted to be a contradiction,
of hopeful eyes, tired smiles and an empty heart,
maybe you should have never been born as a human.

Thump Thump.
Butterflies crawl in my chest.
Thoughts swirl around in my head.
I can’t focus or see straight.
This is anxiety.

And it’s not something I
talk about often, though it’s
more common than one might
think, where my heart pounds so
loud and anxious
thoughts threaten to
drown out everything
that makes me,
Me.

You see, my brain sees simple
things incorrectly.
Texts and sometimes the
thought of leaving the
house sends
adrenaline coursing through my
system like
a thousand shots of caffeine
into my bloodstream.
The logical parts of me fled on the
first flight out of town,
leaving me to feel the tremors and
full force tsunami
on the ground.

Anxiety is a lot like love,
but it’s a battle not a dance.
A lifetime, not five minutes.
Unlike love, it’s often violent.
But just like love, it’s quite silent.

Anxiety feels like hunger, but stronger.
Like fear, but it lasts longer.
Writing this poem has quelled the
qualms that anxiety often spells.

I wish that I could be honest
about this part of me. But it's
one of those things you’re trained
not to talk about from a young age.
Because unless you’re depressed,
medicated, or heaven forbid
you’re not seeing a therapist,
then it’s not bad enough to qualify.
It’s not big enough to report.
I’m not suffering enough.

But if you could just feel
my heart beating fast.
If you could interpret the swell
of my tell-tale blush.
If you could whisk your fingers
through all of my thoughts.
If you could only
hear all of the things I’m feeling
but can’t quite express.
Then you would know that my
silence is telling.
I may be smiling, but currently I’m
fighting for sanity in my own mind.
The mind I feel is no longer mine.
I’m walking a dangerous
tightrope *****.
My mind is a minefield of poisonous
butterflies.
They threaten to swallow me alive, so
I tread the violence quietly.

I fear when I expose you to this
side of me, you’ll only see anxiety
or that maybe I’m lying.
But anxiety is not me.
I am more than mixed up brain signals.

The rest of me is cardigans in the summer,
because it’s cold inside.
I am mock converse and ponytails and
words on paper,
thoughts poured out,
slowly.

I just feel anxious
Sometimes.
More than normal, actually.
But I’m dealing with it.
And I’m no less me.

They ask me a question.
What are we without love?

I am this. In this moment, I am not love.

Have you ever seen the aftermath of a plane crash?
The plane simply becomes an empty shell and bodies are strewn across the earth. There are no heaving lungs, no crying eyes, no twitching fingers.

Every living thing is dead. That's what I am.

Don't ever let anyone fool you into believing that you can't be dead in this life. You can and you will be.
There will be a moment when no heart pulses behind your ribs, no tears are left, and your hands feel nothing tangible.

It will only be you and the ground. You'll look up into the sky and maybe, just maybe, ask a question.

"What are we without love?"

This is that moment. Close your eyes and feel all of it.

I am not deaf
They could say
What they want
What they need
To make me plead
Guilty for something
I have never done
Nor I have ever thought
But I would never run
From my faults and mistakes
Playing ducks and drakes
On an empty lake
Like they do
Just to be away
Cause they are afraid
Of being condemned
But I am not them
I am not mad
I feel only free
When the silence speaks to me

This world is not meant for dreamers, poets or lovers
only to be torn apart
slowly dissected by death's scythe
worn down by the language of life
words, weapons and worries
all designed to destroy us
losing yourself in a flurry
a chaos of accidental karma
taken by the hand and led astray
I never wanted to harm her
I just wanted it my own way
a perfected illusion
trying to mould life to suit our ideals
but it's those same ideas that ****
torturing us during the night
and rotting our insides by the day
the maggots of the mind
make bait for the fishes
the world is full of sharks
this world is malicious
as I wade through the dark
you devour me whole
spit out my bones
and consume my soul
then leave me alone
for there's no more you can take
there's nothing of value left
when I rise I will be awake
or else my name is death.