Anxiety

Anxiety

            poppies like blood on tissue     sticking sweetly to

            dark dust in a bedroom corner remind me. 

            Listen     wet roots stretch deep into the dense          mildewed clay of memory     (a child quaking on             September asphalt,      woodchips strung in a sweater)

            like cold fingers. I’ve slashed notebooks with cheap             pens    

            force-fed them with feigned inspiration     shoved them       to  peeled wallpaper-dust. I’ve felt for variations in         gilded skin and used fingernails to make crimson run

            (Band-Aid wrappers fluttering like moths under my             ceiling fan).

            I don’t like looking at school pictures

            I don’t like large groups giggling at jokes I don’t      understand

            and I especially hate grey carpets and scribble-primal-child

drawings pinned                           

 

                                 fluorescent lights.

under