My Fear

I'm convinced I want to get to know my fear.

Need to? Is that better? Maybe - but I'll go with want

because I hope it to be friendly, like desire.

My own, personal, fear.

One thing that makes it tricky is that

often, when I notice her, it seems like she's a flock of birds driving at my face with flapping, pointed menace.

Reckless menace. Hooked beaks with blood orange dots. Those eyes - you know?

Screeching.

So...that's hard to greet and explore.

But she's not, I don't think. She's not those birds.

She's some kind of magic thing

I can scoop up in buckets and watch

when I'm not too scared

which I've only just started to do because who watches their fear

when they're not scared?

She shifts, she's a shifty one,

but pretty.

Blue, I'd say, if she were a color - blues and greens

and yellows

shapes and shapes like clouds, but liquid.

Her back arcs up like the rising span of a bridge

though she doesn't have a back, but if she did and

I could stroke it -

layered and interlocked like feathers,

fluid and shushing

She's me - she's made from me or maybe she's a pool in me

deep in me that evaporates and condenses as clouds, thickens into storms and rain,

falls and pools

sometimes she is a flood or sea

it's easier to work on friendship when she's a pond and I can come and crouch.

She comes along to danger.

She is the one I bring no matter the threat

she looks like the birds or the abandonment,

but that's just her filling a shape.

I don't know what will come of this befriending

I'll report back.

My thought is this: seeing the beasts and beings that roam my interior

with a sincere wish to know them, possibly cherish them,

will be good.

It's been true with every other beast I've met and every time I've been a beast met my another.

Fingers crossed it holds for this

if not, we'll dream up something else.

-Laura