Each day I forget a little more, the name of a song or who sung it. the name of the movie I just watched the night before. I fear one day I will not remember who I am, and the people around me. Lost thoughts and blank faces always telling me what I should be doing, loss of all self.

What's the soft spot in your heart that could be targeted by someone seeking vengeance? For me it's our dog. Our dog who bestows nothing but love and happiness onto all that she meets, and who deserves no bad days.

I'm a level-headed big dude and feel the pressure to use my attributes to correct imbalances and bring calmness when things get heated. But despite that, if the aggressor in the situation learned where I live, had no love for animals, and targeted my dog as a revenge method I would shrink to the size of a mouse. Those thoughts can paralyze me with fear and have, at times, made me turn around and go pick up the pup from home...just so I knew she'd be safe.

So my greatest fear? Someone finding and exploiting one of the few soft spots I have in my heart.

Would you like to meet him?

He's about the size of an adult golden retriever. He lives in the corner of my brain, lounging on a particularly stout, low-hanging branch. The tree, of course, is covered in vines and flowers, merging with the side of my skull. It's hard to spot, though... no, you'll want to ignore that library, you'll get lost for days. Yes, that one too. Straight ahead, around the fire pit (don't jump in, you won't escape unscathed) and over that bridge. Yes, it looks rickety, but it'll hold your weight. There you go, over the Chasm of Eternal Falling and to your left. No, don't stop. The rustling in the ceiling is most definitely not due to giant arachnids. They're friendly, I promise. Hang a right at the human-sized, mummified, dying creature and... there! You've done it. Do you see him now?

You can move closer, if you want. He sleeps most of the time, emitting little croaks and grumbles while his stubby gecko tail coils around and around that branch. Just don't wake him up. When he wakes up... well, it gets messy. He doesn't like people, so maybe just stop a few yards away. Don't make a sound. He doesn't like syringes, either-- the last time he saw one he screamed for about three minutes straight before passing out.

Well, of course he screams. What else would he do? Can't you feel it? Every time he makes a sound, it translates to a draft of anxiety. When he's asleep, it's a gentle breeze. When he's awake and babbling, everyone within range is about to burst a blood vessel from excess adrenaline. When he inhales deeply, though, you really have to worry.

Of course you'll know in advance. He's part chameleon, so he'll flash some warnings. The last time he sensed a social interaction he turned a putrid combination of pumpkin orange, olive green, and a particularly violent shade of violet. Then he'll take a full minute to inhale-- see that odd-looking patch on his throat? He expands it just like a frog, then screams like one of those videos of a screaming goat until the air runs out.

Terrifying? Him? I suppose, maybe... no, I don't see it. He's a silly, simple creature. Just like one of those little yappy dogs that barks their heads off at the slightest provocation. In fact, it's hard not to laugh when he screams, because, well... he gets such a strange, cross-eyed look, and you can see all the way down his throat. Yep, straight down the gullet. And his tail goes straight and his knees lock. Once he got so panicked he fell out of the tree. He was so shocked he stopped screaming-- although he also got the air knocked out of him, so that may have helped.

How can anyone be afraid of a silly screaming gecko? That's all Anxiety is, after all.

a work drone

happily working hourly

something about

beers after work

the game this Sunday

holding his coffee

grinning like

the Cheshire Cat

morbidly smiling

only this is real

the next forty years

seductive with frequent

pay stubs and home loans

I‘m watching myself

as if from above

miming for air

only to be told

this is how I will grow old

I suppose my greatest fear

is having fakeness poured into me

fill my veins with plastic and replace my

organs with pieces of artificially-coloured glass and chemicals

and when you're done

I won't be able to grow anymore

because the stems are filled with plastic

and the leaves are made of artificially-coloured glass and chemicals

so when the sunlight hits me

I can only reflect it back

and never soak it in

and when I creep into the shadows

I won't feel their embrace

anymore

I’m trying to pry myself away from my stupid heart which wrapped a spiderweb of veins around my body, cramming blood into my hand and making it feel empty without another human clutching it. My heart sprouts roots that twist around my feet, dragging me back to childhood, honey light, and ghosts. Tentacles pulse in my brain, I’m curled up and stupid, sobbing over the goodbyes and graves of ghosts, and the throbbing of the honey light, and how you can’t go backward but only be tugged till your lungs fissure and veins break like dams. Your heart will murder a thousand bodies, then you will haunt yourself. I will not forgive my stupid heart, but I beg strangers and loves to take both me and the tangle of heart, to hold our hands and stare at the pinpricks of dead stars and pretend the sky is the only haunted thing.

My biggest fear used to be death. I'm not afraid of the afterlife. I'm just endlessly curious and didn't want my light to dim before I got the chance to explore to my heart's content. I don't want to die painfully, but I can't imagine that most people do. Ideally, I'll go quietly in my sleep after reading The Fairytales of Hermann Hesse for the umpteenth time.

Now, I worry about things happening to my kid. One of the scariest things about having a baby was knowing that I could no longer protect her once she was out of my body. She is now part of the world, and subject to all its beauty and its horror. Experience is a double edged sword, and a sharp one at that.

She is so sweet, so friendly, and also endlessly curious. She is smart. She is beautiful. A giddy little spitfire with soft, wide chocolate brown eyes. I know that all I can do is protect her while she's young and give her the skills to protect herself as she gets older. Teach her, then trust her.

She will get teased. Her heart will get broken. Grandparents and pets will pass away. She'll meet kids who've learned all the wrong things at home. As she matures, aggressive men will suggest too much, and she'll hit many bumps along the road to self-discovery.

I'm almost thirty and have been unravelling the messiness of broken hearts and broken promises for the past ten years. My pets and grandparents (save one, my mother's mother) died in my adulthood, all under traumatizing circumstances. Too many of my friends have been taken out by tragedy, mostly by their own hand. Aggressive men suggested too much, and I was too naïve to know that attention does not equate affection. So many of my poems are written with scorn for their subject. I've seen too much true crime for my own good, and I'm paranoid most of the time because of it.

I want to shield her from these things, but I don't want to rob her of the lessons she needs to become a well-rounded human. No one gets out unscathed and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I just don't want to have brought another life into this world only to lose her to its coldness.

I could say spiders.

Or heights.

Or swamps.

Instead, I'll share my recent discovery of my true greatest fear.

When I was little and depression was only just beginning, I didn't know how to make sense of what was happening.

So instead, I gave that voice in my head a name.

Called it Connie, short for Conscience.

We would talk back and forth day by day.

In a strange way, I knew she was a part of me but instead, she became an imaginary friend for me.

Friend might not be the word for it...

She and I have known each other since those many years ago.

A figure in a black cloak, shrouded in darkness.

I know now that she is me.

I know now that if she rose that hood, it would be my face I see and no one else's.

I always feared that some day, she would come to me, raise the hood off her face and that was the day I would give up on life completely.

I still fear now that I might see her, again.

She was brought to life due to the silly musings if a child that couldn't understand themself.

No matter how grown up or broken I have become, that child is still a part of me.

And so is their fear.

Here's to never seeing her again.

Life isn't the prettiest but I didn't let that voice win then and I certainly won't, now.