i'm talking about it

I have panic attacks sometimes

it's like there are butterflies in my stomach,

and not the exhilarating kind

like they're holding their breath and charging 

towards the walls of my guts

it's like I swallowed a whole garden

teeming with insects

and whatever else rustles through

its overgrown and unkept grass

it's hard to breathe

with all of that in there

I have these episodes sometimes

when the garden gets overgrown,

when I forget how to breathe outwards

I raise my shoulders

and expand my chest

in hopes that this will prompt

some air,

free of the acidity of panic

and cool on the way in

the air never comes,

too big to cram its way through

the barricade of my constricting throat,

stinging without pain,

only choking tightness

unsure what's worse:

the hyperventilation

or being forced to remember

the calloused and cigarette-stained hands

that continued to touch me

after I had said no