Phantom Convulsions
It starts gently—like a setting sun,
a tingling drift uncoiling in my abdomen,
tracing meticulous pathways through my frame.
It slithers into my mind, a weight both foreign and familiar,
a harbinger of past collapses,
whispering peril in the language of ghosts.
A whisper becomes a tremor, becomes a howl.
The cold vacuum yawns wide, swallowing every lucid thought.
The world outside disintegrates into shadow.
Fear is no longer a possibility—it is law.
Rational thought fractures,
splintering beneath its weight.
I am hunted—
by echoes, by specters,
by the certainty of failure.
A thousand past mistakes resurface,
each one carved into my skin.
My heart pounds, hammering dread into my ribs,
a steady cadence of self-inflicted peril.
I drift—untethered, lost in a space with no end,
caught in a current I cannot fight,
dragged by a tide I cannot name.
I have strayed from the path.
My only armor is retreat,
a desperate crawl into the deepest alcoves of my mind.
I search for anchors, for proof of the real,
but terror clings to me, thick as tar—
a parasitic thing feeding on certainty,
swallowing past and present whole.
Damn, it’s painful.
I question the steps that led me here,
the fractured frame of my own making.
I am reduced to a child—
small, breakable,
locked in combat with invisible horrors
as they claw their way from the abstract
into the marrow of my bones.
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