Just a Miscommunication

There’s a tick-tick-ticking in my head and it sounds like a clock but it feels like a bomb counting down.
I think there’s something happening and it doesn’t seem like nothing.
No, this time it must be something otherwise my heart wouldn’t be pumping like this.
It wouldn’t keep drumming with this persistence and strength.
I wouldn’t be hearing it in my ears or feeling it in my veins.
It could be real this time, no it must be real…
How could it not be real?
Is it really just a failed connection, some miscommunication, some faulty processing in my brain? Could there really be some misunderstanding between what’s real and what I’m perceiving?
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know and this thrumming makes it hard to think.
There’s a pounding in my head and it feels like it’s compressing—that’s the problem with my thinking—and now I’m heading for the end.

But then I realize that the ticking is just the tapping of my foot.
And the blood that was rushing is now slowing.
And I’m calming, I’m calming, I’m calm.
And I think I must be a coward
because today was ordinary.
There was never anything to fear.
The panic that was so gripping
was really just a lie.
It fooled me into thinking that
things were ending,
when really things were fine.

 

 

About the Poet:
After graduating from the University of California, Berkeley, Jacquelyn Spence has been working as a writer and poet while pursuing a Master’s degree in English. For any inquiries, please emailjacquelynspence93@gmail.com.

 

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