I knew the first time I felt the words nearly disintegrate in my mouth and fall back down my throat between a humming engine and black pavement in my driveway.
Everything feels lighter when the sky is darker. She left me lying in the damp grass outside my house. It could've been boring. It could've been easy. I could've closed my eyes. Could've slipped inside, instead I lay with my face to the moon, all pensive & strong & confused.
I started by counting the stars.
Then I painted the orbs that glowed around them with the tip of my finger.
I stayed calm even when my chest fell toward my shoulder blades and turned clean air to dust.
I felt twilight washing over me.
My mind raced as this twisted agony that rested quietly in the depths of my stomach lifted its head and slithered itself up my spine into my skull with the help of my heart strings.
I was consumed by this strange tiredness, that induced a definite dreamland before it lay me down to slumber.
All the clear thoughts in my head began to sink into this cluttered cloud beneath them, where they broke apart into a chaotic, uneasy mess.
When I finally shut my eyes, it was as though it was raining under my skin.
I could see it and I could hear it and I could smell it like an April night.
I knew when I turned twelve, I was not like the others.
I met Anxiety in the back of a washed out white classroom when I was fourteen.
It was a February morning.
Now I'm 18, it's a cool night in May
& she's here to stay.