The Downpour

It comes like a summer thunderstorm

If you’re lucky, you get one tiny drop of rain

Seconds before the downpour.

But when it starts, it’s relentless.

My mind is constantly competing with itself.

Thoughts race by faster than what is comprehensible,

Always reminding me of things I‘ve done that I’d rather forget,

And things I haven’t done yet.

Sometimes, it’s easier to let my mind leave my body,

To go live the life of someone that in reality

I will never be.

Someone smarter, prettier, better than me.

Reality is such a hard place to be

And all it takes is one drop of rain to pull the floor out from beneath me.

The smallest shred of doubt squeezes its way in and defeats me.

I can never guess its strategy.

Sometimes, it wins be being shy and sneaky,

Sometimes, all it does is show up and

I’m lost...

Lost in pure chaos.

“I’m scared,” I’ll admit to myself.

And suddenly my right to breathe is taken away from me.

My organs have been taken out

And shoved back in my body in all the wrong spots.

Ants are running through my veins instead of blood.

I see no flood;

No lake or ocean surrounds me.

So tell me why—how am I drowning?