Remington

Have you ever tried to explain the horse track that has been dug into our necks and diagnosed anxiety?

What I mean is the hoofbeats that use your collarbones like a hollow rut to win their race and you’re left gasping for breath

But we’re not actually physically dying so why can’t you just build a fucking bridge?

And what they really mean is that I am cursed to see the world through everybody else’s glassy eyed view but it doesn’t matter to another if they cannot see it too

So have you ever tried to put a finger to the horses that gallop across your neck, hoping you’ll lasso them with shots of dark rum and too many chain smoked cigarettes?

Anxiety is a kingdom I have been to before and all its subjects wear masks of surface words because we’re all too fucked up to say what we mean.

What if I told you, friends, that none of us hold our secrets very well?

It hides in every corner of each smile, every breath, we take to cower behind our metaphoric conversations that we say are,

simply politics.

But what if we talked about the politics that are our unstable hearts instead?

The hearts that beat out of sync with no rhythm or time to even write a decent poem line

I had to rip open the scars of my past lovers and look down at a childhood plate full of no self-worth but plenty of calories just to convince myself I had not taken my life that one night.

My traitorous heart offers no comfort or reassurance as he sits across from me and I can feel the beat like our Oklahoman summer night heat.

It’s like those ten sweet seconds awaking from sleep and knowing you are safe, and suddenly remembering what it was like that one time you were woken up and

safety was trampled by a horse in a race you didn’t even know you’d began.

What I mean is how can you tell someone that you can see the world ending while they stare at the pixels on a screen and can’t even understand the music of the beat?

What I mean is how can you tell someone that there is grenade on your neck, exploding over and over and over

and over while you try to stay upright and just try to survive?

What I mean is how can you try to explain to someone what it means to have known a demon on earth and your nightmares are now his playground?

What I mean is how can you tell me that my feelings are wrong when they are the same feelings that help me choose to love you every single day?

What I mean is how can you scream silence while my lungs drown in cigarettes and medication just to numb the vibrations in my neck?

Have you ever tried to explain that knot that sits in between your heart, the one that wraps around your throat like an ice cold hand that’s been left hanging out a rolled down window too long?

Don’t.

Because no matter how hard you try,

a horse will always beat a human.