Judging my safety
Like collapsing sandcastles
Rough-built at high tide

Feeble foundations
Based on assumptions
Freak waves waiting

Only recently
I learnt that not everyone
Always feels afraid

Turn gently inward
To ask whether I’m okay
Quietly observe

The body holds the answers
Truer than the pliant mind

the moon bares its jagged mouthful of tombstone teeth
but its fearsome snarl is lost to my eyes
for its sacrilegious white light cannot penetrate through the
looming canopy of gnarled old trees

i raise my rusted lantern high
green glass panels protect the flickering flame

glowing yellow eyes glare out, reflected in the rays of my lantern's light, but i do not fear or flee
i know now that beasts are ahead, in my path
and now that i am aware of their presence
they cannot ambush me from back the way i came

the howls echo through the mountains before me
the wolves expect an easy feast
but i will not be dinner

i do not feel safe
on the fifth floor
with all the windows locked
and two turns of the deadbolt
don't forget the chair under the door

i do not feel safe
walking home from the grocery store
in this horribly gentrified neighborhood
at 4pm on a sunny
saturday afternoon

i do not feel safe
handing over my clothes to someone else
i know they have to be washed
i've gone too long already
but i bite my lip until my belongings are
back in my line of sight

i do not feel safe
alone in zoom office hours
with my camera off
how can i be hurt through a screen?
but it never reassures me

i do not feel safe
when the electrician comes to fix
the circuit
i called it an electric circle
he does not look at me that way
the way that makes me sit in the
backseat of my own mind
but i cringe when he looks at me
at all

they call it hypervigilance
vigilance
from latin vigilare
"be watchful"
i am watchful, watchful, watchful
maybe that's why i cant fall asleep.

Ah shiny approval,

Warm and soothing on the skin,

Absorbed like a lizard,

When one is hypervigilant.