My fear has only made me
Small.
Recoil into the shell of my epidermis.
Build mountains on my skin where flat surface should be.
Seal shut my anger with glazed-over eyes and stubbornly frozen lips.
Small like
Bread trail crumbs
And
Ants crawling through rock and stone.
Like
The mosquito sipping on summer’s blood
Or
The last grain of salt sprinkled into cake batter.
Small.
My memory has failed me, so I don’t know if this fear is rooted in the personal or the public. The felt or the heard. My reality or another’s.
But it is fear nonetheless.
It bullies my shadow as I walk. Tells her to disintegrate into concrete traps. Or hide in the soles of my feet. Grab my ankles to prevent forward motion. Hug the nighttime so as to appear invisible.
It teaches me to surrender in the name of itself.
And never my own.
To surrender has always been coupled with a fear of insecurity for me because of this. It was always to surrender to the external. To some thing. To some one. For some thing. And for some one.
Well damn. Can I have some of me?
As I write this, I’m beginning to work through this fear of mine. One that I won’t make explicit so I can keep some part of me to myself. But one that is still rooted in my misperception of surrender.
It is imperative that I confront my internal so that I can recreate my external. Peel back the parts of me still dreaming in terror so that she is reminded of waking up.
Because this fear has only made me scared to open.
I got so used to being closed, I forgot the parts of me, broken.