A Poem For Anxiety.
Where each line begins with C.
completed: june 27th, 2025
published: june 30th, 2025
In honour of graduating with a Creative Writing BA, I thought Iād use words to put into perspective the ā and I cannot emphasise this enough ā natural feelings of nervousness and uncertainty that I and many experience.
Graduation is an emotionally vulnerable experience that I can confidently say brings out highs and lows in a person mentally. It is a proud accomplishment and equally something that leaves you questioning your place in an adult world. When thrown abruptly into a world with adult money and adult decisions and a career that sometimes seems impossible when juggling the want for a family and the want to see the world, it is understandable that one would feel anxious.
And so here is a nameless poem, about that, favouring the letter C.
Crawling beneath skin is an agitated
creature who nuzzles in a bodyās nooks and
crannies
causing elbows to throb and fingers to twitch and
up
calves to bounce and
down. Thecreature waits in darkness and
catches a person in moments where their mind is silent.
Candid sadness is
captured in photographs meant to be
colossally happy and full of
celebration;
cheering and drinking and dancing and
crying occur all around me
constantly.
Carousels keep spinning, and turning, and stopping, and starting, and
carousels donāt stop for those who arrive sad to the
circus;
Creeping through veins is the agonising itch to scratch and pull apart t h o u g h t s like
candy; and uproot perfectly planted gardens to find the perfectly buried secret that has
caused this
calamity.
Carex is slathered on hands, rubbed from wrist to knuckle, and pulled over fingertips, without
caution, routinely and obsessively and aggressively, while the only
crime
committed on the mattress in the room next door, is the indentation of depression whose
cause is unidentifiable and proven by tearstained pillows.
Crawling beneath skin is an agitated
creature who
cannot be
caught by bare hands and numb minds.