Hard to breathe

(The following is not really something I can call poetry. It is an attempt to manage the spins and panic attack/PTSD spiral I go into around this time of day… lately they are feeling quite overwhelming. I find writing can take me out of the spiral at least for a while.)

Hard to breathe

All the life squashed out of me

On the road years ago

Head over heels

I don’t even remember

Black out after crash and burn

Following the session

To explore my past

What the hell was I doing

So very far from home

Falling through space

Like a disoriented satellite

That had lost itself

Within the dark gravitational forcefield

Of an ancestral moon

And when I crashed

You telephoned the hospital

But they said I was fine and not to bother to fly

12,000 miles to see me

But I was sick and falling through space

With not a soul to embrace me

Except Marlene

She came to help me

At the lowest time

But then I ran again

As the family I lodged with said

You are too sad

We don’t want you anywhere close to us

Why didn’t anyone understand

Or give me shelter?

I was just on the run

All helter skelter

Due to the wounds of the past

I see it now

But its too late

And so at 5

On any day

The anniversary of your lonely childhood afternoons

I struggle to breathe

And make order of the chaos

I feel surrounding me

I was barely 17

When the first disaster hit

And now at 57

Who knows where this pain will end

Nausea all through my head

As it was then

And only text messages from miles away

To puncture the solitude of the day

I want to trust

But what if it is all lies

And everything turns to dust

Again?

And who would want to take on

All of this trauma and misery

Of my tangled twisted

Trauma history?