Juliet Cook

Internal Suffocation

He had to turn the car around
in the store parking lot and drive us back
to my place because I felt like I was going to DIE
I felt like I was going to have another seizure
inside that store I felt like I was going to panic
I felt like I was going to I felt like I was going to
and it probably would have been my own fault.

Inside my own space, my thoughts escalated
from having another seizure to having another stroke
to thinking there was a very high likelihood that I might
have kidney failure hiding behind my back

and it was too late to fix myself and I might
have a sudden heart attack. A few weeks before that,
I had tried to watch Olympic figure skating
while having a two hour long panic attack
because I'd had a seizure a few weeks before that.
I left the TV on, but I couldn't sit still.
I thought about calling someone, but
they wouldn't have been able to fix me.

 

Internal Suffocation

They can say I exaggerate everything, but
they don't know my contradictory truth
they don't know how things work
inside my brain. I don't know
for sure either, but a male deer might break
into my house and ruin everything
because it might stab me with its antlers.

Almost every time I stand outside
on my own front porch by myself at night
to spend a few minutes gazing at the moon,
I worry I might have a seizure on concrete or
someone in a car driving by might suddenly
shoot me. I stand close to the door handle
just in case. I might take more photos of the moon,
of the ice clinging to half-dead branches, but
then I might have a seizure on the frozen ice,
bang my head into frostbitten blood.

That rabbit sitting on top of the snow drift
might be rabid or something. Don't look at me
that way. I said don't look at me that way!

I might spend that unknown time frame of post-seizure
memory loss walking alone along an unknown road
and then get dragged into an unknown alley,
and then wake up in pain and have no clue
where I am, what happened to me or
where all this blood is coming from.

Internal Suffocation

Here's my small fucked up contribution
to the world. Speech stilted,
memory desiccated. Me
exaggerating everything.

My lingering outbursts
turn into violent mosh pits
inside my own mind.
Then I fall down into oblivion.

Then I get back up again
with a broken bloody nose,
with my upper legs saturated in grease,
with my fucked up brain not remembering
the name of the man standing next to me.

Not remembering if he is good or bad
or human. Maybe more ghosts are hiding
inside my fucked up brain until
they all collapse with bloody noses.
They'll get back up though.

I don't think ghosts are invisible and
even though they sometimes temporarily disappear,
I don't think they ever go away.
I think we create our own ghosts
so that something lasts forever.

 

Juliet Cook is brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. She is drawn to poetry, abstract visual art, and other forms of expression. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.