No Escape

 It gnaws at your fingertips,

            presses at your sternum.

It scrapes its gnarled claws

                        along your forearms, clanks

in your head

                        like wrenches in a dryer.

 

Maybe you can hide behind a long run, a romantic

evening, a piece by Elgar or Fauré,

but it’ll find you,

            it’ll wait days for your return. You

 

look in the mirror, and there it is, hideous,

face. Trembling hands

            pick, pick, and scratch

            every bump, zit,

scab from past panics

until you’re too ugly to even show your face

            to your own mom

           

or your wife. A cabin in the woods,

            the highest alps,

            the remotest desert,

                        there is nowhere

 

that it isn’t. It doesn’t matter what you do

            or where you go

because it’s in you,

            coded into every cell. It is you.

***

(Cuenca, Ecuador -- June, 2020)

As I learned the hard way several years ago in Africa, you can't escape anxiety and depression by running away. Even sometimes when you're trying your hardest to do everything right, these mental health issues still find a away to consume you. If you're dealing with these things, please talk to a trained mental health professional before taking any advice or perspective from my shitty poetry.