when you tell me to breathe

My anxiety is not a cartoon character or fluffy "monster" to be coaxed. 

My anxiety does not speak in comic sans or sing happy birthday songs. 

My anxiety is suicide. 

My anxiety is rape. 

My anxiety is torture.

It is not your play thing. 

It will spit in your mouth. 

And make you beg. 

It will squeeze your throat 

and force you to your knees. 

And be back again,

its hollow knock at your door;

depressing your lungs

and stealing your breath. 

You think you're cute 

with your creative tricks. 

Anxiety is a god 

that you will bow to

in time. 

pages like flesh and ink

When I want to cry

I read;

like stuffing my brain with pages is

equivalent to quieting the monster within. 

I feel her hot breath on the back of my neck. She is

so 

so so

close. And I am shaking. 

So I turn the pages until my eyes are weak from the journey. 

break in the event that anxiety was right all along

The reflection of the TV is pink

splashed on my knees

and quick flashes to keep the attention

of people who are trying to forget.  

This waiting squeezes our spleens 

and we stop breathing

for a time

to see if the pain stops.

It never does. 

I am of this pain and not. 

I am a daughter of this grief and a stranger. 

Mercurial; Salt-kissed skin

In a swimming pool. 

I don't deserve this grief, she says. 

While he calls her by someone else's name. 

when the dust kisses the earth again

I am the heir to a throne of depression

masked in a legacy of passive aggression. 

The granddaughter of humor as an antidote for feeling. The keeper of assumptions and petty cash. 

But they missed the other bloodline. The one that runs parallel to the narrows of pain and suffering. 

That taught me compassion and digging hard fingernails into soft dirt. Taught me "do" and "go" and "be."

The presence of a lightly worn crown made of dirt and rocks and mud and the water that tadpoles swim in. 

I get to choose.

the land of teacups and drought

Lashed to your sails,

her body screams that this is not the time to be quiet. 

It is hard to surrender

while the sirens call. 

She feels broken

like a cup that will never be full.

He doesn't want to go home. 

And so, 

home stops existing.