I am lying in bed with my stomach rolling like the tide
It is two hours before my day starts but I already fear it
My stomach’s shores come in and then run back into my throat
Making me hit the icy, villainous hard floor, awakening
Every part of my brain to its normal, anxious routine of thoughts
I run to the bathroom, clicking on the light too fast, and I am thrown into
A self-made galaxy, spinning orbs everywhere, I grab onto the sink
My pupils turning like binoculars into focus, my veins creaking to find the
Perfect balance except my feet take a turn then, not knowing which
Leg to support the most weight, but what really is weight when you can’t
Eat anything because you are scared the smallest piece of food might
End up in your windpipe and cause you to fight for just one breath when
You really don’t know if one breath is worth fighting for?
Anyways this is a toxic routine, making myself sick and fearing my bed
Because it only signals the bringing of a new day filled with new chances
To have to walk in front of new people, your own mind fixated on
The fact that they are watching you, when really no one is watching you
Because you can’t even seem to look in the mirror without seeing
Your aging forehead from the countless moments you sit in
Your porcelain bones with your soul out in the backyard
Drying on the line and you try to figure out the best way to
Slide it back on even if it is still wet because you have a
Party to get to in fifteen minutes but you don’t want to go because
You have social anxiety and if you mess up and they figure out you are
Nervous about just seeing the same old people for the one hundredth time
They will ask you if you are suicidal and on an antidepressant?
This all reminds me that I might as well have woken up two hours early anyways
Because I need to go to the kitchen and conquer my fear of swallowing pills so I can
Add to the rattling of words and fears of chemicals and fears of losing my parents and lost Opportunities swelling up inside my stomach, which is probably why I have a stomach ache Which ended up not being the food I ate the night before even though I worried about that for Two hours before I fell asleep in my bed last night
So after I lay in bed and find the courage to get up and coat myself like a pill with
Good mornings to my mother and Hey babe to my boyfriend I cleanse myself with
The lingering fumes of ancient, careless teenagers spilling out of my used textbooks
Wondering if they too stared at them with eyes that never close shut and
Minds that don’t just stop working when you pull the dusty plug out of the electrical socket
My bones situate my flesh apart from my brain as I choose to drift into the
Depths of my undesired passion for overthinking the next moments that will
Most likely never happen but just the one percent that I could start bleeding
All over the place just because I am a woman or bleeding just
Because I can’t take it anymore is why I have to go to these imaginary
Trains of thought because they are so deceiving, making me gullible
Enough to think that each time I leave my own temple of nerves
Thin as a broke man’s set of cards and cells as dry as the Sahara
I believe in my ceased to believe heart that this time, just this very
Hundredth of a second in the history of all humankind that my very own
Dirt based brain might concoct some way to get out of my fears and anxieties
But then the bell rings, the alarm goes off, the microwave dings, the pastor says you are
Dismissed and I leave the imaginary, settle back into this rented home of flesh and
Carry on, as the star student, the athlete, the careless, young spirit that “I Am.”