you can't speak because all the worries would come spilling out.
overflowing nightmare realities borne of anxiety-fuelled doubt.
and every time you look at me
i get an urge to shout.
but i can't, so i don't, because i don't want all the worries
to come roaring out.

but if i could
oh, i would
tell you with a glance
instead of having my eyes do that familiar yet uncontrollable dance
because i admit to myself (admit to you)
that this is all a little too much

i'd say a little too much more than that, too

and when you're me, and you're like this,
you can't really smile.
because stress pins your lips
into a single file.

(all the worry going: hack - hack - hack)

you submit to it, like we do in the city
when tasked with its defeaning
construction sounds.
opening the blinds, thinking: urbane visionary pretty

and here labor and its fruits align.
  the beauty. the skyline.
that withstanding pain
allowed you to feel

and here you know it's real.
the work on the skyscraper is part of the landscape.

the scraping at my nerves: this is part of my landscape.
the worries that sit inside, that dance outside,
that pinch themselves in between.

the roaring, the dancing, the hacking. telling me
always what i'm lacking.
having me wish i could get packing, abandon myself, leave myself, teach myself, show myself, throw myself,

all this makes up the architecture of my mind.
our gray and white matter contents.
because i chose today to define and anchor this existence
as much in its function as it is by construction.

i choose to be a work in progress
over self destruction