I’m sitting here, trying to figure out what instills fear.

The things that make my skin peel, as they take away all that’s real.

I feel like a busted tire or a missing wheel,

Bumping and crashing into life as I fall downhill.

I need some pills—enough to completely fill my stomach till I’ve taken enough to kill

The monster of fear I can’t see or hear.

But it hides in the shadows; it gives me chills.

I need a way to reveal all that’s really unreal,

That conceals itself and appeals to my mental disordeal.

Declare war upon this relentless despair;

If I blink, I’ll miss it as it vanishes into thin air.

Aphantasia is a thief with a quickness rare;

One minute you can see it all, the next there’s nothing there.

I close my eyes; it isn’t fair—I can’t picture the type of clothes you wear.

All I can feel is, upon my cheek, a lonely tear

For all that always disappears as days morph into years.

Everything fades to black while everything remains unclear.

I mean, hell, I couldn’t even tell you the color of your hair.

I write these twisted tales with this haunted quill;

The words will keep coming and continue to spill

From the quill to paper; every word feels like a prayer,

In hopes that one day I might win the fight.

I try every day with all of my might,

But all I do is wrong; nothing goes right.

Half the time I lose all sight;

The world goes black when I close my eyes,

Stuck in an abyss on the dark side of light.

Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m still here or if I died.

It makes me think, since I can’t remember the last time I felt alive.

I feel like my ticket to life

Changed into a fight to survive.

Time to take back what’s mine—

The joy of being alive that I’ve somehow been denied,

A hollow emotion bouncing around inside.

It’s impossible to find when all it knows is how to hide.

Someone once asked me if I’m afraid of death;

I laughed at the question underneath my breath.

Why be afraid to see what lies ahead

When, in the end, we all have to pay the same debt?

I’m not afraid of death; he’s only a friend I haven’t quite met yet.

I can feel him watching from the edge of my bed;

It doesn’t scare me; there’s an excitement present instead.

We’ve been told and believe death is bad;

That’s a lie guiding us through a life misled.

Everything that’s ever been born will come to an end;

We need to embrace the descent

So that we can finally transcend

All the pain and suffering we have to deal with.

But when we accept them without hate, we create a cathartic bond.

When we see they aren’t good or bad at first, it seems odd.

Without pain, we’d never know comfort;

Without suffering, we wouldn’t have the strength to endure moments smothered,

Knowing every moment is being wasted and the rest are numbered.

We need to see that all opposites are only different shades of the same color—

A gift wrapped in wonder, an impossibly open-ended puzzle,

A timeless riddle that we chase till we make it to our funeral.

Once the hunt is over, it’s time to rest and move on to something more beautiful.

We look at life like it’s this horrible crucible,

Never realizing all we see is a divine miracle.

The fact we’re even alive to experience life is proof unequivocal;

It’s unpredictable, purely mystical, undeniable, ever desirable—

Completely invisible, though we still sense every ripple.

Our hearts beat along to life’s endless song, coming alive with every syllable.

So what does make me quiver in fear?

Maybe everything that I see, for it keeps vanishing before it reappears,

Only to blink, and then again it disappears,

Like smoke in the wind of a burning fire.

It gets bigger and hotter by the hour;

In the end, after it showers, I’ll be in the ashes, ready to flower!

—Terry Salmon—