Julie Fedderson

Feeding the fear

She is here, with her taste of metal and brackish stink.

My heart strains against sinewy confines but it won’t escape.  

This I know, I studied the book and the white coats say it’s impossible.

Yet still I wonder.

Her touch not real, a product of my overloaded brain trying to organize, compartmentalize.

Rationalize.

Some days my swagger is impaired, the facade of calm ragged and I worry she will notice, she will finally claim me.

She taunts me.  Hunts this poor white trash that got an education; drinks my claustrophobia in that coat decorated with serpent’s staff. 

And she bloats larger.

Gorging on doubt and hot shame of failure to fulfill my different gypsy destiny.

The rush of blood in my neck drowns my stuttering pulse, the waves fill my throat to cease empty bartering for time wasted.

But I am of the air.

I rip myself from her sodden arms and suck the sweet taste of a blue sky.  With caustic eye/I push her down, crush her larynx to silence her siren’s calls. 

Mistress panic, you will go hungry today.

-Julie Fedderson

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