Callie Watrous Poet Spoken Word

Anxiety

Anxiety—
it grips my heart.

Tightens
its hold
on my chest.

It squeezes…
and squeezes.

I can’t breathe.

It’s like my lungs
stopped working.

I breathe faster—
and faster—
and get
less
and less
oxygen.

The less oxygen I get
the faster I breathe.

But the faster I breathe—
the less oxygen I get.

It’s an endless circle
that won’t stop.

My mind runs millions of miles an hour.
It never stops—
it keeps going—
speeding up
faster
and faster—

racing toward a finish line
too far
for my eyes
to see.

I cry out for it to stop.

No one hears my cries.
They just walk past—
consumed
by their own
mental battles.

I beg for everything to pause.

It never stops.
It never pauses.

I spiral into a panic attack.
My hands shake so bad
I can’t control them.

My ears ring—
drowning out the world
that has suffocated me.

My legs refuse to work.

I just want to scream…

But when I try—

Nothing comes out.

Tears roll down my face.
I can’t stop them.

My body convulses from the attack.
I lay on the ground, unmoving—

yet still shaking.

Crying
for it
to stop.

It hurts.

Everything
just hurts
so bad.

I can’t control the pain.

I lay there,
stuck in limbo—

trapped
between
the air
and the floor.

Finally…
after the struggle…
I can breathe again.

But it doesn’t make me feel better.

’Cause I know
I’ll go through the same routine again—

tomorrow.
And the day after that.

Because anxiety
never stops.

The cycle
never ends.

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