Serena Malcolm

Anxiety.
It’s never a mere
stomach knot.
It’s like a coarse frayed
entanglement of rope
that’s devoured
as it sinks
into a
molten metal mire
deep
deep
deep
inside,
Fires fly
and gases rise,
Beastly belching bubbles
that swell and explode
like fireworks of fury,
All the while
an angry tremor
bellows through the scalloped chambers
that encroach upon the hypocentre,
Evey tiny movement
creates a catastrophic cacophony,
The roar of the lava
scorches an
unforgiving
path through all of the hollows
as it climbs
and climbs
leaving nothing behind,
Nothing
but devastation
in its wake,
And in the ashy aftermath
scars are made,
Like silvered branches
they are formed
and they deform
the landscape
changing it
forever,
And they always
apprehensively
anticipate
another
nauseating
knot.

Today’s #NaPoWriMo / #GloPoWriMo prompt was to write a poem that is about something abstract – perhaps an ideal like “beauty” or “justice,” but which discusses or describes that abstraction in the form of relentlessly concrete nouns and adjectives. I chose to write about anxiety, something I suffer from personally. I took the simplistic idea that anxiety is like a knot in your stomach and obliterated that knot in volcanic fury! That’s more like it…. *cough*