Drowse - Physical World

Growing, shrinking,
I don’t take care of it
‘cause it’s “what’s inside that counts”,
and I’m scared of it--

the way it binds me to the “physical world”,
how it reminds me:
life’s a leaf in October.

But there’s no “physical world”--
there’s “no inside or out”,
air flows through the mouth
and into the blood

I wanted to see
in the third grade:
tiny
medieval sword--
from my grandfather in Spain--
into my stomach.

Without pain
or discovery,
through screams she found me
so no insides came out.

I wake alone at night
with my anxious heart
running wild in my chest,
a reminder
that I have a body,


(Panic attack.)