Sometimes I feel like there’s a worm inside my mind,
I hear it, when it’s nighttime, it has a voice
and that voice tells me to turn my body four times
so that everyone I love doesn’t leave me.

More than that, though, I feel it
right at the back of my skull. It nestles
deep inside and chokes the blood flow away
from rationality, and I clench my fist two times two.

And then it uncurls. I think it is wounded
but it is really just gorging on the compulsion
I have fed it. Again. But the reprieve is glorious
for a moment, until its maw opens back up for more.

Its body is a spiral, contorting thoughts
until I am at its mercy; although it is part of me,
I feel as though I am part of it.
It’s impossible to run away from an attached body.

One day, everyone you love will die and it will be your fault,
ballet turn, pivot, dance en pointe my darling, again,
walk, walk, walk, walk, there we go, now people are alive.
Now you’re a hero, for a second, for two.

Here we are in the thick of it.

Oh, you didn’t like that, did you?