A seed grown in shadow

When the seed of fear is planted in minds, It germinates in brains as a tormentor— Sometimes sown by a whisper, a shadow, a lie repeated twice. When illusion becomes reality, And starts by making the heart skip a beat, then more of its beats, then all of its beat. It creates monsters in our eyes in the dark, Born from our own imaginations. And it can make them fly, swirl, drawl, crawl, and do anything— Make our hairs stand on end, Our feet walk on eggshells, on a slippery slope. It can crimp us into a shrimp. When it creeps into our grip, It brings a nice gift of heebie-jeebies— That send us on a purposeless, Directionless meander, Like a chicken, head just severed and unrestrained. Fear teaches our hands to fight, And our legs to take flight, But it’s never patient to judge us right, Even when fear is out of sight. When the seed of fear is well tendered, Fear can even make us no longer fear fear. When its taproot has eaten deep into the hypothalamus, Then the mind is already gnawed by monsters That, time and again, we created out of nothing.