Why do I sit here
When I know what will happen
Why do I stay
When I know you're not here.
I know there's nothing to fear,
But it doesn't make it easier to tamp it down.

I hear the whispering voice in my head
Telling me lies that fill me with dread
She sounds like me, I know she isn't
She is my anxiety,
And I can't hide inside my own head.

When my hands shake and ache
And my stomach seems to spin
When the world goes blurry
My thoughts churn,
And they win.

My vision begins to tunnel
My breathing is hard and fast
I know panicking is pointless
Worrying is worthless
But it's so overwhelming, a tidalwave of terror that washes over me.

You ask why it's so hard without you here.
I need a grounding light
Something to guide me back
Without something to distract me from myself, I go black.
Without a hand to hold or a voice to cling to, I have lost myself again.

Without kindness, I cannot live.

"Worrying means you suffer twice!"

Easy for you to say,
Yet I live this. Worrying means you suffer more than twice.
Anxiety was never a choice, nor a sign of weakness or frailty.
I am not what I suffer from.
It came because I attempted to be strong enough for everyone.

last night
I dreamt
that I got into
a fistfight
with Copernicus
because
he wouldn't agree
with me that
the universe seems
to revolve around
your smile

I'm beautiful
You've told me all evening
and will tell me all night
but will I still be beautiful
*in the morning?

I am in the middle of a swarm
Individual faces hustling around me
Blurred into the chaos of life
Yet seeming to have direction
Do they know what they are doing
or are they as lost as me?

A heartbeat in darkness
I know the way the rain can fall
And empty spaces
I know empty spaces

I know nothing at all
Go leap your bar
Go fill your jar
I know the silence

I could never steal the heat of the sun
To give you warmth
I could never cut the night apart
And bring you light

My feet are only carriage
And destinations never reached
And there is beauty in a soul
I never show you

Hasn't heaven crushed us under
Such joyful sounds can't get me high
Can't give me life
I know not anymore

I know you now
I know you know

There is not enough beauty in the world

And adding to it
Only takes it away
Dont take it away

I live on shorelines
You live in horizons
There is not enough beauty in the world

Tonight might last forever if we let it

Or tomorrow sun may rise

Lurching over
A river that flows
So slowly that it
Becomes the sky's
Mirror

A bridge is stretched
Easily over it
Staring at itself
In its entirety
It's meticulously
Constructed arches
Become hollow mouths
In the rivers silvery
Surface

I want to visit
The river one day
As opposed to
Just passing over it
So I can watch
The belly of the day
Skip across the river
Like so many flat stones

Think of a wild forest filled with every
Known flower. Sometimes you'd miss it,
But it's there. Cleverly
Hidden among loud ones. It'll hit
You like a comforting wave,
Making you feel happy,
Serene. So very safe.
Maybe it's sappy
But that's how I think
Of her. She's the softest flower.
Always on the brink
Of heaven. The magnetic power
Of lulling you with love, kindness.
She's always there, basking in her own beauty

-m.b