Anxiety

Rewind from the cicatrix—you know what? Screw it.

Pull the rug out from under my retro daze, pull the tape out,

all of it, unspool this VHS metaphor and hit me quick with

an inspirational quote from Facebook: Everything not of love

is being pushed to the surface for healing. Thank you. Now,

give me a Vesuvius-sized, sloe-eyed nurse to bury me—

our ashes intermingling. I do not want to be alone. I do not want

to be left to dangle over that cortisol-constructed cliff because:

the scar. Because they tell me that to be alone is not natural,

because I fear that it is and it isn’t, that it is always and never

all the (there is no such thing as) time—the clocks beg me for meaning

like little dogs’ eyes; the numbers change whenever they blink.

I’m sick of this galaxy even though I crave the Greek: from gala, milk.

Warm from the stove, soothing—still, I can’t stomach its tangibility.