I watch from the prison

my brain has made for itself as

flowers float easily

on the summer's breeze, drifting

into the media's waiting basket like an

old lover. Society adores

people like them,

has built the very garden

around their healthy stems,

these golden poppies and

romantic roses who all but crafted

the mold, whose brains

are prone to function correctly,

who don't stay up until 5 a.m. barfing

because they're so afraid of death,

of their lover falling out of

that sweet, safe love,

of death

of there could be a robber in the house right now and I wouldn't even know it

of oh my God I shouldn't have said that thing last week what an idiot

of I can still feel that boy's hands perverting me and he still knows where I live-

afraid of this mental illness continuing

to hollow out the person I was

and replacing it with a black emptiness

that people don't like and

that I don't know how to talk from.

And you should see peoples' faces

when I tell them I have GAD-

the eyerolls, because

"Everyone has anxiety".

The old-timers murmur something

between sips of coffee

about how they can't believe a thing like 'worry'

gets its own diagnosis nowadays.

And oh God,

you have no idea how I wish it was just 'worry',

how I used to pray that I could just

file away these demons in a drawer somewhere,

ridding myself of these awful ball-and-chain devils,

equal parts nature and nurture,

birthed from hell just to weave the strings of my life

into a cage.

You've no idea how badly I long to grab ahold of them

by their skin-hooked claws,

stretching out their black husks and tying them neatly

around my stem like a pretty ribbon,

making myself a perfect bouquet,

the picturesque girlfriend,

employee,

daughter,

fitting into these roles perfectly without the anxiety

making me sharper than I should be-

more jagged and afraid,

like broken pottery left teetering on a shelf,

more fear pheromones

than person

and most of all

so much harder

to love.