i can’t keep
the plates spinning
balancing my own
failing mental health
with the stresses
mounting around me
curling up
tighter and tighter
into myself with
no armor to shield
my tender catastrophe
from a world at the
brink of destruction
where all i need
is barely enough
but more than what
dreams can manage
when my words are
muted before i can
try to form them

i close my eyes
and each breath grows
more shallow as the
adrenaline of panic
closes in from all sides
incremental anxieties
added in spools of
barb wire around my
throat and wrists
crucified by my many
failures and left
for the vultures to
pick my ivory bones clean
in a desert of hope
where each new storm
erodes me further
from fleeting sanity
numbed in this vacancy
as i slowly fade into
the obscurity of time