Learning How To Walk

2 steps behind

Life’s fine

I’ll survive

Pick up the pace

At some other time.

Seven steps behind

I learn to worry,

It’s quiet now

But rumbling underneath

Is a beast

Too strong for me.

13 steps behind

Daily lessons on anxiety,

It’s turning

I can manage

But as it feeds and grows

I become weaker and slow.

15 steps behind

It’s strong now,

I’m torn apart

Pieces of a person

Glued together by constant pressure,

Constant fear, constant stress,

She’s living with a demon.

17 steps behind

Help me

Help me,

I whisper through drowning tears

It’s turning, tumbling, tilting

Stop it, kill it, save my soul

I’m harbouring a monster

Lying in my own body.

I’ve taught myself to live with the weight of the world

Crushed, beaten, destroyed

So many steps behind

Still learning to walk.