Anxiety

I can't sleep at night

without waking to the pitter-patter

of rain on the inside of my

sternum.

The thumping is more the wish than

the fact itself.

The world is quiet then,

at 3:28,

but it is the loudest crowd in my head,

ten thousand rising screams, tearing

bits in every direction.

It is the boom of thunder shaking my

frame.

The pictures rattle on the walls of a

room,

an earthquake.

The lonely, simple chair trembles in

the center of the gray.

The voices throw the walls about

and crack the plaster

floor to ceiling.

They cry for a change and revolution, but

I'm too scared to move, too weak to

feel,

a void within a void.

And the slow beating of tears on the

roof of a room feel more comforting

than the arms and bodies.

The cries cease

At 3:28 when I wake.