Anxiety
Facing morning:
I’m late to bed deliberately,
hoping I’ll sleep through the night.
Not much interested in my dreams
or avoiding them.
It’s the tossing and turning
I can do without.
Three a.m. sees me
staring at the numbers on my clock,
after I wake in a cold sweat.
Seems I’m worried over concerns
real and contrived;
little, remote possibilities are
amplified in the shadows
given off in moonlight and streetlights
that invade my bedroom,
having broken in
through the openings in the blinds.
Picking stories from the news
applying them to family and friends
in horrific, detailed what-ifs.
Fretting over my hats and
how they could be better stored.
Concerns over germs
my niece and nephew will get
if they don’t stop all that playing
with other kids.
Tossing and turning is
my body’s auto-responder
to try to shake it off me.
Nothing helps ‘til I come full awake
take deep breaths
and consciously allay my concerns
not with solutions all the time
but with the rational acceptance
that there’s no action
I need to take
just then
to fix
anything.
