im noticing

art by Noorain Inam.

notice how you show your hand- or lack of. notice how it feels to move in honesty. and then how the honesty moves in you now as it comes begging, and you’ve lost all velocity. your stomach settles in a way that catches in your chest. notice how it feels to move despite- no! with? in addition to the Moment’s overwhelming feelings. see how it pulls you belly-first in search of language (and not refusal).

name that suffocating feeling. move your lips and jaw and throat to accommodate consonant, vowel, vowel, consonant- fear. (take a moment to be light in insisting ‘R’ should be a vowel) do not linger. do not lose yourself in the next “everything-is-made-up-and-nothing-is-real” spiral even if it calls your name.

notice fear. give it a face in abstraction and a body you don’t moralize. in all this anthropomorphizing, give it a body so it cannot gather in dark corners or slip amorphous into tiny gaps. remember when fear had a schedule? made a show when you have love (grounded) but everything else feels shaky? tentative? how you miss that schedule like you miss anything at a loss- at least it was understood.

notice how acting in fear fucked it all up- not helpful, but true. notice how moving in fear only brings shame and guilt, and more fear, and the Big Sad, and so so much to be undone. notice safety as Fear’s decided deception.

notice how you feel unraveled and unsteady. notice your perpetual tears and all their reasons. notice you are trying and trying and trying and trying and trying. notice this is the first step in many. notice you can quiet the spiral with one less rotation and then one less. and one less. notice you don’t need to escape through the window when the door is unlocked.