A stone lives in my soul.
Sometimes it lodges itself in my heart.
Stopping the beat that proves I’m alive,
Sometimes it lodges in my stomach and I feel as though I’m drowning.
I live in constant chaos.
nothing where it should be,
I look at it and wish I could put it right.
I pick up one thing and feel the anxiety well up inside me,
Crashing over me.
I start to shake.
I can feel the storm coming,
As it has so often before,
I put it back into the disarray.
A stone lives in my soul.
It controls my mind.
It creates fear.
Pulling me under.
Someone honks their horn,
My body jumps involuntarily.
For days.
For no reason.
Every touch,
Every sound,
The building anxiety.
I lack control.
I am in constant fear.
A stone lives in my soul.
It’s wrapped around my neck,
Like a millstone,
Dragging me to the bottom of the ocean.
I watch my friends.
The smile and laugh.
I am still anxious,
For no reason.
They ask what’s wrong.
They show their concern.
Concerned looks,
Concerned words,
What can I say?
A stone
Lives
In my
Soul.
About the Creator
Kristen Campbell
Hi, I’m Kristen Campbell, a grad student and stay-at-home wife. I love my pets, crafting, gaming, and traveling. After 5 years of teaching, I’m focused on learning, healing from trauma, and living life creatively and fully.
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Human Complexity
Sometimes I sit with uneasiness, its company filling the empty spaces, the empty silences. It pricks and pokes at the tiny holes between breaths, between thoughts, between the seconds in which I believe I exist. Other times I dance run wild with joy, laughter on the wind, my heart soaring as I leap from cloud to cloud. Occassionally I find sadness or comfort in my bed, and I am not always sure which one is laying beside me. Is the dark the result of sadness covering my eyes or because comfort has wrapped in too tightly in my blanket? My strangest companion is loneliness who exists but doesn't. Ever present in its absence. Each feeling a part of myself, separate and intrinsic, real and artificial, flat and complex. Contradictions that are logical and necessary.
By Kristen Campbellabout a year ago in Poets
FPS: The Last Flame Challenge Winners
Welcome to our first Winners Announcement of the year and to the final challenge in the Fall Poetry Series. The Last Flame invited writers to sit with endings, using fire as a central image to consider what remains when something burns out: ash, warmth, memory, silence, or the faint promise of what comes next. The strongest pieces treated endings as gradual rather than sudden, allowing them to flicker, dim, and linger.
By Vocal Curation Team6 days ago in Resources
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