When will fear, stretched like a film,
no longer wrap the world in a haze
so that my eyes cannot discern its true forms,
making earth’s boundaries uncertain, approximate, impenetrable,
rendering me contorted, paralyzed,
cowering as a mouse in the darkness,
heart fluttering, bones fragile?
My mind, a slippery seal,
a fogged windshield.
I want to breathe like a stone.
Instead, I am a vine twisting upon itself
seeking, desperately, a branch upon which to cling.
My organs contract, hold their breath,
my eyes refuse to focus,
like a pitch that will not tune.
My edges ambiguous, undefined.
A wet, silvery fish,
gasping, flailing.
When will the opaque fog of fear
drift or disintegrate,
its shroud slip off my shoulders
like a nightgown before love making?
My feet yearn for soil.
I search for my center, pray for the solidity of my bones.
My brain, a psychiatric ward—my thoughts a rubber ball,
bouncing endlessly from corner to corner
jailed by electric white walls.
My spirit a hollow-boned bird,
trembling, restless to take flight,
ascending, aiming for that crack in the clouds
where the God-Sun peaks through in its radiance
to comfort us.
