anxiety reaches around the corners of my heart with spiderlike hands and pulls on the ends of my hair with unfeeling fingers
follows me just out of my line of sight but close enough for me to feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up
i turn but there's no one there
or is there?

anxiety reaches around the corners of my heart with spiderlike hands and raises its hackles like i'm someone it doesn't know
follows me far enough away that i sometimes forget it's there
but close enough for me to remember where it was
i turn but there's no one there
or is there?

anxiety reaches around the corners of my heart with spiderlike hands and pats my arm a little too hard like a drunk stranger
follows me like i'm its only way home and if it loses me it will be lost in an unfamiliar city at night
i turn but there's no one there
or is there?

When do petals lose their gentle sway?
When do they detach
And begin to float away?
What sort of pressures
Cause it's smoothness to fray?
Dryed and roughened,
Weakened and flayed.

When do petals begin to fall?
Into a world of dirt and decay...
Soon after, when is it,
That they crumble and break?
Laying on a horizon strewn,
With vague silhouettes and
Unfamiliarity.

And if after, the petal gathers itself,
When is it, that it is raised into the sky,
Into a familiar unfamiliar atmosphere?
When is it that the petal loses itself,
And in its emptiness,
Tears at its own soul profusely?
Elevated high
Into the expansive, empty sky
Away and away
From any natural warmth
And cleaved apart from any stability.

Because...
The petal,
When it lays back against the wind,
The image of freedom it always imagined,
Was actually
A prison.