I am feeling taken over by anxiety.
My body is a land that is being colonized, ravaged
by something outside myself.
Something unwelcome.
Something devastating.
Something utterly unrelenting, undiscerning
in its total and complete annihilation of the land I have cultivated for myself.
I take up the defensive.
The intruder in my sacred space
brings me fear and takes my security.
There is a battlefield under my skin.
Across my whole body, I feel it.
It feels like explosions, the gnashing of teeth,
the ache of conflict, violence brought on
by an unknown power somewhere out there.
I hate to feel war take place in myself.
Defending the only thing that is truly mine.
My body, my sanity.
In my sacred space, nothing else is ever so violent,
dramatic, woeful as this. It is the single cloud in an
endless blue sky.
And it feels like the end of everything,
but really, it's just passing through.
All in a day's work.
To conjure up some tactical, military maneuver
to outlast, to live to fight another day.
Depleted of my resources,
I am still.
I have always been.
The unseen battle raging beneath the surface.
I try to hide in the corners,
in the dark shadows of my insides.
I hold my breath
and pray that I can survive this one more time.
The same prayer I prayed the first time,
and the last time, too.
Here I have planted a garden.
Tended to the soil.
Nurtured what grew.
I watch it burn before my eyes.
I wait for the smoke to clear.
For the distant sounds of enemies to fade.
I emerge to clear the debris
and start my garden again.
Exhausted, I carry on.
AMV