system dysregulation is
uncomfortable to endure. However,

“life does not wait,”
a friend warned me once,

“Well, yes;” I still want to
go to class. To get meals. To gatherings. To meetings. To

spaces, catalysts for anxiety,
spaces that sometimes escape my comfort zone and lie

startling and dysregulating
what becomes my Flesh Prison.

Sometimes, they feel unsettling and unnaturally unsafe, and
Doubt spells doom on the walls of my guts:

“this is the end”, “turn back”, “you won’t make it,” yet
I always emerge from battle unscathed.

It’s part of what compels me to return to
those places, still at war in chains,

Even in fleeting, present moments, amidst the
phlegm, stomach flips and swells of fear,

I persist; it’s part of what compels
me to get to the places again, despite the fact that Nervous