Home

I think I am becoming agoraphobic.
The world has turned sharp.
Technology blisters, weather churns,
and people—people are simmering toward a boil,
as if the lid will rattle loose at any moment.

Inside my head, the cabin pressure drops.
Breath is rationed.
I take aripiprazole.
A daily ritual, lined up with the other drugs.
They call it treatment,
I call it choreography—
motions rehearsed so long they’ve forgotten the dance.

I stay under the covers.
Afraid not just of the street,
but of the air between here and the door.
In movies, this is the scene where I’d rise,
where the underdog stands blinking in the light,
forced out to conquer what he fears.
In reality, no script advances.
Anxiety sinks its oily teeth
into marrow and bone.

So I watch instead.
The same window,
the same slice of Main Street—
that stain on the brick wall across the way
growing darker with each rainfall.
But the sun is here today,
bright as Memorial Day parades,
and still I am not parading.
I have movies to keep me company—
the ones where someone braver than me
faces the fire.

⸻

But here’s the truth:
I am not waiting to be rescued.
The world will spin out,
yes—
more shootings, more smoke, more sirens.
And I will still breathe in this body,
still rise when my legs remember how.
Fear does not dissolve me.
I let it gnash, let it spit its crude oil into my bones,
and then I stand, dripping.

Call it stubbornness,
call it defiance,
but someday the stain across the street
will fade into nothing
and I’ll be there to watch it disappear.
Not healed, not whole,
but present.
Even if it means stepping outside
with knees shaking,
I’ll claim the day anyway.