Calliope

 My anxiety is a brick wall with a cartoon impression of my head in the center. I run headlong into my anxiety so much you can see the collection of grout on the ground. I back up and take another crack at it. My anxiety is now a brick wall with a head impression and a thousand tiny stars. They call it progress. They say it has to get worse for it to get better. Keep it up. Keep going. Keep grinding because that's the way forward. Keep the momentum. Put your nose to the grindstone. Keep your shoulder to the wheel. Useless euphemisms to the rescue. My anxiety is a brick wall of terminological inexactitudes. It doesn't lie, it skirts the truth. It's alternative facts in a bucket like chum for the brick sharks, and I go again. The bricks collapse. Is that broken neck a lucky break? They ask why I didn't just go around. Go around? They never said I could go around. Now I'm covered in a pile of bricks and they say it's the latest tech in weighted blankets. FUCK!

  I am flexible. I can fit in your box, but those are your four walls, not mine. I am im perfectly designed. Daughter. Mother. Wife. I’m a maniac with a knife …in my back. And you twist . I am a player. I play by every rule, but you keep moving the goal line a foot closer to it was never going to happen anyway. I am historically ill-defined. I don’t fit your narrative, but I won’t be revised. I came correct . And what I am now is free.

    Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The founding fathers of this nation agreed that these are fundamental rights, and as such, they cannot be removed and must not be infringed upon. Our ancestors fought for freedom from tyranny in the Revolutionary War. They threw off the yoke of our oppressors and formed a government based on freedom, and its sole purpose is the preservation of these unalienable rights. The Declaration of Independence from British rule asserts that a government derives power from the people’s consent to be governed. When a government becomes destructive of these rights, the people have the right to alter or abolish it.             We, the American People, DO NOT CONSENT to be governed by a fascist dictatorship.             We do not consent to this digression from that hard-won freedom.        ...

“How have you been?” you ask. I…well, my hair has grown out. It’s in that awkward stage, but I don’t bother looking in the mirror. What does it matter? It has been greasy for days, and my scalp itches, but I can’t seem to force myself into the shower. I’m thinking about shearing my head. I can’t really point to a day and say that’s the one. That’s the day I gave up. It has been a gradual downward spiral into…this.  I need to curl up somewhere that’s not here. Somewhere that I can’t hear the drone of traffic or any of the other intrusive noises that never stop. There’s food on my shirt that I can’t identify, and I haven’t been outside the house in over a week. Where do I go from here? I’m not naïve enough to believe that I can’t get any lower because I’ve inhabited those depths before. I don’t want to go back, but at least it’s familiar if nothing else. What’s happening out there isn’t. Every day, the news media shows us something worse. I’ve never seen anything like it. Today...

"The elephant went rogue,” is what the journalist wrote, “Inciting fear in the hearts of the populace!” What they failed to explain was the pachyderm’s pain And how tired she was of being abused. It was no sudden thing; she just left the ring. But let’s face it, her needs were always second to yours. Did you think your chains were what bound her?   The barkers have all scarpered with the day’s receipts While the monkeys played keep-away on the flying trapeze, ignoring the ringmaster’s orders with the greatest of ease. And the clowns in their car, the drunken little lechers, Carried off the lion tamer’s wife while the lion made a nosh of the tamer’s entrails. The cages are empty; the geeks have all flown. And the ringmaster sits in the spotlight alone.