5 Poems of the Mental Weights

Anxiety

The hallways of school
Surround you
As you laugh with your friends

You feel its presence behind you
Looming
Foreboding

You wish it would leave you alone
Instead of controlling you
Like a puppet

Whenever its shadow falls over you
You feel an impending sense of doom
So you try to stay in the light

But if you make a mistake
It will choke you
Squeezing the air out of your chest

Other times it will stab you in the head
With its knife of stress
Over and over

Sometimes its black tendrils
Will hold you back
Imprisoning you in self-imposed isolation

And sometimes
It opens its monstrous mouth
And swallows you whole

It grabs you in its fists
And holds you
Hiding you

"Fear"
It whispers in your ear

"What if..."
It likes to murmur with a sniff

Nothing makes it go away
It's a giant with power over you
Yet somehow, it's tameable

Medications
Therapy
Friends

They give you the power
To shrink the monster down
To a little, nervous prick