Scaredy Cat
/Scaredy Cat
I am not scared of nighttime, but I fear the dark.
Buses and cars terrify, but I can do trains.
The great outdoors is fine but nature makes me sweat.
I hide from crowds, but genuinely like people.
Contradictory terrors and paradox dreams
That's the scope of my pear-shaped universe.
I miss the challenges of olden life,
What to wear to the club or how to do my hair,
What book to read over dinner alone,
Or perhaps when to get in the car and just drive.
Where did my feeling of safety leave me,
And what am I to do now, covered in failure?
I wake up each day and try to roll over,
I don't want to face the fear but it's already there.
Lurking at the fringes of my life
A parasite, a symbiotic poison eating away,
At all I found happiness in and peace.
Fraidy cat, little girl shivering,
At darkness or purpose or life itself.
I’m lost to panic in a labyrinth of dread,
And I know if I could breathe it could change.
I could still my bird-fast heart and think.
Remember my way the turns to take.
But I’m backed in a dead-end corner,
Panting and whispering madly,
Rocking in a ball tiny and small.
Trying to escape the notice of my terror.
I hate this mind palace of broken memory,
Turned into a maze by what feels like cowardice.
My head is sore from weeping
My fists ache from clenching
My knees are bleeding from all the tumbling down
But I can’t still the shaking of my arms
As they grasp tight around me.
I want to fix the paradox.
I know it’s all backwards.
I know these are jitters and worries.
This isn’t real threat or danger.
No minotaur lurks at the next turning.
That carrion breath is manufactured in my mind.
If I could just believe in that,
As firmly as I believe in the lie,
Of my trip hammer heartbeat and wheezing lungs,
I would be free.
I could be safe.
I would throw the scales from my eyes.
The blinds from my windows.
Banish the monsters from below my bed.
But no, the nightmare is winning.
And as the doubt and phantoms press closer,
I know my world for what it is.
A self-made prison for one.
A conflict of desire and intellect.
A place for Scaredy Cats.
Where darkness and night are one and the same,
And dawn might come but eyes are blind to it.
Where the mice have fangs and the dogs are demons.
How does a Scaredy Cat survive?
In small balls in damp corners,
We shake and dream of a way out.
