Umbra

A poem on anxiety and fear.

It was tiny and exceptionally sharp
This fear I’d found.
Tiny, but always looming within;
Tiny, but always tearing away.

And it grew and tore through me,
Stretching its hulking mass.
Consuming me, wrapping around me
Chorded coils that choke and squeeze.

Coils born of anxiety,
Dark and massive and flexing.
Twisting and choking me,
Til naught remains.

But fear-

But shadow-

But deaths icy grip.

Dying slow each day,
Strangled by the coils of anxiety.
Suffocating in the snare of fear,
With no reprise but death.

But a light shone through
Fears flexing coils.
Weak and faltering,
Yet hope remained.

Through the mass
Hope brushed my face;
A temporary comfort.
Engulfed by darkness.

Still she pushed forward

She kissed my cheek-

She took my hand-

She whispered to me:

“I will save you,
Trust in me.”
And I believed;
I fought the darkness.

Then fear flexed
Its deathly coils again,
And the light faded;
Forever into abysmal gloom.

She lied.


40 lines