flirting with social anxiety (it’s impossible)

 

pacing round my apartment

because i could not look you in the eye.

pacing round my apartment

because i am too god-damned shy

to say

hello.

 

o hell  hello

i can look at your heels

your knuckles

your neck

your lips,

but your eyes?

those golden pearls of motion

waterfalls and whirlpools

dripping all over the room until they flood the space beneath my eyelids

(i dart away)

(i dart back)

 

(pacing pacing pacing)

 

and my vocal chords grow twisting tendrils of tentacles,

suffocating the polite conversation out of my diaphragm and into my eyelashes

(eye flutter, not knowing what to say)

 

the fear has taken my body, my nerves,

captive-

and it binds me back until

you think of me as stranger again.

a moment, our moment,

dead and gone.

 

finally, i’ve stopped pacing.

i can sit still,

breathe,

and bury another hopeful

underneath my feet.

 

 

Other posts that may interest you:

• The Chair: Sitting With Everyday Violence
• The Trouble with ‘Ecocide’
• Carbon dioxide removal – hit or miss?
• Local Victories for Turkish Opposition — A Sign of Hope?
• Are France and Japan a Mismatch Made in Heaven?