He licks floors sticky. Newspaper ink bleeding into a piddle puddle. Gibberish people talk at blooming volumes. He leans up the quay so his collar’s tags jiggle like Mr. New Bone.

He isn’t the only one here who wants to pluck a pigeon off the street, feel its kibble-y heart flutter under the city-gray feathers and snap its willow neck while he projects his personal feeling of panic into its black eyes.

In the dawn-ish fog along the Liffey, Dublin is a cloud city. Floating. A hermetically sealed pocket atmosphere that condensated concrete, wrought iron fencing and yellow buses shortly after this sky-born mass of water vapor abandoned gravity in an attempt to blot out the sun.

He hopes we are in the sky so he can justify this sense of falling. And so when we do come plummeting globeward, like a damp newspaper, the destruction will be so total that the Dionysus statue reverts to gravel in his stainless steel bowl.

The pit of my stomach has twisted into a soft pretzel flavored with the salt of my tears. Shaking, I know, it's "no biggy" right? Just a thing. Ain't nothing but a thing- but it's everything. This could change things. My breathing is irregular, my heartbeat following the wrong tempo, my mind whirling, my mind swirling, my mind twirling around a fence of gated feelings, I'm crying. Breathe. God, breathe. Okay. It's okay. It's not okay. I'm not okay.  I'm going to be sick; I grip my sides with unheeded force. Someone hold me, someone do something, give me a pill, something. Please. Please. Please. 

The twitching lure is upstream,

Never to be reached.

The current is stark,

Red eyes stinging, 

Dry throat closing,

Twisted face wet,

Drowning above water,

The childish splashing of one who's

Dull enough to think they're moving.

There's nothing to be done for it so,

Claw at arms, legs, face, rip the flesh,

Useless things anyways.

The fear that you will fail

The fear of rejection

The fear of leaping over the rail

Into unknown land

Afraid that when the ship sails

You'll wish you had

Vulnerability

Keeps us afraid of the result

Worry brings us to a halt

Making a decision?

Thoughtfully considered

Mistakes crushing our ambition

Over-analyzed?

Of course it is

Faith keeps you alive

Living and not just existing

Hoping it works out

Getting rid of all doubt

And in the end we say

"I don't know what I was so worried about,"

My mind buzzes,

the voices in my head

mixes with the outside world

I gasp at the scenarios occurring

within my mind as my imagination

run wild.

The possibilities raged within me

as I try to stay positive.

The telephone rings

My heart thumps out of my chest,

beating in my ears; thud! thump!

in the back of my head

a black little ball

maybe not a ball, but a mass

it grows

like a tumor

it's a thought

and it's a feeling

but it's also kind of empty

it has no substance and it has no meaning

but it is endless

i wish it could be eradicated

like some disease

but instead it grows 

in my head 

finally it is so big it ends up in my belly

it's funny, this thing

it's like a big bunch of emptiness

but you can't feel "empty"

empty isn't an emotion

but this thing is empty

and i can't stop feeling it

i don't know what it is

or why it's there

but it won't leave, and it never does

it touches me from my head to my toes

this big, black mass

i think i'm empty

but, still, somehow i'm full

it's funny

the way i'm full of nothing

worry.

it feels like death.

like butchery, like annihilation, like a massacre.

it feels like gut wrenching diarrhea,

why wont they call back?

"he has 12 hours to live."

it sounds like, an all caps message, "Carrington, brady killed himself."

it feels like choking, like suicide, suicide, it feels like leaving, it feels like loneliness, it feels like they left.

it feels like your own breath in the back your neck, like gentle hands slapping you across the face, hard enough to knock you out.

it feels like pissing yourself in public,

like the dreaded "i have to talk to you."

it feels like that time you slit your wrists too deep, when you found every chair in your house stacked in the middle of your kitchen, when you got home and found the house empty.

it feels like giving up.

like the air has been sucked from your lungs.

it feels like 7 different antidepressants.

it is undeniable, and it is scary.its what it feels like to lose everything you've ever cared about in a matter of seconds.

Worry is weight.

It is the thing tugging at your gut to let you know

"You're not fine".

Worry is a lead dumbbell that grows heavier with every waking moment.

Worry eats away at you until you're in shaking shambles.

Worry can and will make you its own.

For some, Worry comes every once in awhile. 

They are merely acquainted with Worry.

For others, Worry has overstayed its welcome.

A form

Cosmic misbehaviour.

Or is it me

Misbehaving

against nature.

Or is nature itself

Misbehaving.

Or that actor on TV

Tom Cruise

Misbehaving.

Is it a sin to die?

Or is death

Misbehaving.

Lend me your carriage

To see

Who the hell is

Misbehaving

this harmonic chaos.

Maybe its my words

constantly

Misbehaving

my thoughts.

Or that lyricist

in constant agony.

Maybe its an evangelical

passage

misbehaving.

So once again

reader

what time is it?