Your hands are shaking,
breath abruptly and sporadically
pushing its way
out of your throat.
The cold air creates vapor clouds with your deep breaths
that blow out like steam from a faulty machine.

What had triggered your condition didn’t matter,
--which is what you tell yourself--
what matters is calming yourself down
from red alert
to blue calmness
but you’re stuck
in a plum-colored purgatory.
 
You rub your hands down your arms,
trying to find something to busy them with
as if using sandpaper to smooth out
the bumps and grooves of an old chair.

You do feel like old furniture,
creaking and groaning with the feeling
any second you’ll collapse under your own weight.
Every imperfection dashes into your daydreams...

No.
Focus on something else,
think about a random film
you saw in first grade
rather than the fist
that’s migrated into your throat.

It will work out.

Yet, you’re worried,
worried about the worm
that’s wiggled itself in
and never wants to leave.

It’s a finicky little thing,
the little worm of deadlines,
probably going to evolve into something insubstantial
in the end,
but it’s surely putting up a fight.