Anxiety II

Bright lights.

Pounding head.

Lights too bright to focus.

Nausea.

Acid churning in my stomach.

 

Curl up in pain under my soft

pink blanket in hopes of salvation.

Saltine cracker crumbs spewed

over my bed.

 

Pills in a bottle to

mask the pain

rattle as I hunt

for the right cocktail

to, for a moment, numb

my body for sleep.

 

Trapped.

Inside this skull, brain.

To scream, to cry

with no rationality.

Enraged over a busy signal,

depressed over missing homework.

 

A lethal dose of alcohol seems

enticing. At least I’d have fun

in my final hours of consciousness

staggering around campus flipping off

my twelve page paper and cursing music

and the distance of a minor seventh

that I could never sing.

 

I take my impressive cocktail

of pills. A new mixture concocted

by the psychiatric department of

Hackensack University Medical Center,

claimed to “fix me.” As the capsules

begin to dissolve in the acid a

tranquility flows like a crazed

patient being sedated.