“Have you ever kissed a lover
so hard
you chipped a tooth?”
she asked
with a grin that
revealed more than one
chipped tooth

He shook his head. “No, and I
really don’t intend
to.”

Well, that’s what you get
for hitting
on a girl you meet
in the yard of the local asylum. But
she said she was a
nurse...

“Anyway,” he said. “If this is what happened
to you… What happened
to him? I mean,
after the kiss.”

“Oh, there were many,
many kisses actually,” she said. “He’s
dead now.”

“What? He died?”

“Well, yeah, dogs don’t
live that much. Compared to humans,
I mean.”

Suffocating, drowning,
Adrift in the maze of my mind,
Each twist and turn taking me deeper into the darkness.
Lost. Stuck.
Twisting, sinking weight in my chest.
Falling
        Down,
               Down,
No escape.
Sickness. Disgust.
Thoughts running rampant,
    Don't know what to do.
Trapped in the maze of my mind.

~ j.l.

Trapped inside a box.
Everywhere I look,
I see confined emptiness.
My limbs are yearning for a moment's stretch.
Trapped inside a box.
My arms are rendered useless,
as they lay squeezed against my sides.
My neck is straining in it's cramped position.
Trapped inside a box.
I cannot breathe,
my heart pounds against my chest hoping for freedom,
How can one be trapped inside of a small box, when their body is in the midst of a wide open plain?
Anxiety.
It is a box.
A box that cripples rationality ,
trapping you.