Angoisse.

I.

Start up the sirens
Help me, somebody help me
I'm falling
Vomiting
Shaking, sweating,
There are bees in my head
There is nowhere to go
I can't even look behind me
I'm frightened
Past the point of caring
Who hears me calling out.
So help me, or kill me
Living in terror
Turns each second into hours
I have to get out.

But now, slowly
I feel my chest muscles
Gradually relaxing
The pit of my stomach has
Stopped collapsing
My head's no longer
Buzzing and burning
Some semblance
Of normalcy is returning.

II.

Some metal sags and weakens
In the heat, and some emerges
Beaten and broken
Thrown on the scrap piles
To make horseshoes or hand grenades
And some turns into the finest blades
Tempered and hardened
For all its trauma in the coals
And if God does indeed play dice
I guess sometimes he re-rolls.

III.

When you've stared down death, accepted it, realized it is both an inevitable outcome but also an option... Life can no longer hold any real fears for you. Nothing in this world scares me, medication withdrawal aside since that's beyond my control. My rational mind is dead to fear, even if I still have insecurities and more primal apprehensions locked inside that only a psychologist could probably get at. Instinctive fight or flight behavior is intact, but irrational thinking and the cycle of fear it leads the mind into it have been slain like St George's dragon; my eyes are that of a shark, cold and functional, and though I still strive for happiness and human contact, it's because of a desire to do so and not a fear of what will happen to me if I fail.