I’m anxious. Anxiety spikes in absurd waves, spikes in spinning, pain-ridden motion and spiders spirocheting into transcendent darkness. Put your hand on my stomach to open up the dimension of clouds. It is over before you can formulate your next thought.

You know, I’m anxious. What if I die and I have never even lived? I wanted to be boundless, borderless, endlessly travelling and integrating into the core of my mother’s elderly, spinning atoms. Now, the only thing boundless, borderless, and endlessly spinning is my mind.

There is panic and doom at the core of things. I fall apart. Literally. My cells are too weak to hold my skin in place; they simply surrender to the loveless weight of gravity. There is something compromising, something radical, in the law of existing. It’s almost demonic.

I can feel the hair on my thin legs resisting, stretching towards the hope of oxygen-saturated lungs. Every day, I lose myself, only to wake up to the panic of bones collapsing. Who knows what I am on? There is a lab next to my bed.

We could make out. Now wake me up.

Every new thought is just the poetic translation of something I felt as a kid. I am still a kid, but a dying one. They feed me. They bring me to the toilet. Now I am collapsing internally - again, literally. My organs are starting to fall apart. My body smiles in weakness, and I stretch my clenched fist, holding pain pills, towards the uncertain future.

Time passes either way, whether I am anxious or not. I already said it, but I think it will be over before you are even able to formulate your next thought.

Imagine if everyone put their hand on someone’s stomach! Imagine the number of dimensions we could open up. At arm’s length. On a summer night. The blue, silent surface of an algae-filled pool and the dew around slightly cold, soda- filled glasses. The molecules formulate and dance in rhythmic expression until their laughter merges and dissolves the idea of life we once held.

Life is endless. Life is infinite. Life is tears of joy.

I rearrange the thought of my hand around the cold steel of a railing at the moment the dawning sun hums in orange. I am but your vision of me; you are but me, and together we fall apart in this lullaby.

I am still anxious, panic-filled even. It’s too dark in my room for my angels to find me, and my demons know this! They were just waiting for the right time to finally torture my innocence, but I refuse to break. I refuse to let evil take over.

Maybe they will catch COVID one day and develop ME. Then they will know what real anxiety looks like.

Now, if only the light of my heart would guide the angels towards my soul and let them sing their peace into the oxygen-saturated air surrounding the softness of my skin. Now, if only someone would put their hand on my stomach.

I mean, think of the dimensions we could open up.