Anxiety

There is a scream inside my head

And it will not let me rest

Around me, the silence is maddening

Inside me, this scream is deafening

It envelopes every resting thought

It swallows my imagination

Around me, others walk contently

Inside me, my heart paces rapidly

This scream in my head is rather needy

Time of day or responsibilities are not priorities

It decides when to come and go

Not satiated with yes or no

It needs complex answers to impossible questions

To hear it’s echoes in places unmentioned

Legitimacy, it needs

For the panic and guilt it feeds

So where’s my release?

It’s certainly not in this 10 x 12 box

With chipped walls and ceiling rot

It’s not in this endless stream on my laptop

The stream of sound that lives in me

So loud I can’t remember to breath

It’s the cancer that rots my bones

The substance abuse that kills my soul

The scream that none but I know

That slowly etches its toll

These content beings in their silence, kill me

Just shut up and give me peace

If not peace, give me apathy

For once, let me feel nothing

Or find a way through the synapses of my brain

Down my left or right membranes

Through my fists or my mouth

Please, just get out

Quit tainting my every thought with dry rot

Quit drowning me in negativity

Distracting me from possibility

Let me be

When I try to muffle the cries

This screaming, I can’t subside

Like it lives deep within me

In parts I can’t reach

So I carry on in this metaphorical box

With chipped walls and ceiling rot

All the while, this scream in my head

Steals the night from me again