anxiety attack while driving
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remember hands on the
wheel keep breathing even if it’s just the quick and shallow think about sound the music no the music is too much think about the engine’s uneven mumble the clicking turn signal metro- nome without a song you could pull over to wait out the beehive bleeding inside your skin except that the panic in part is because you’re running late and you hate being so late unable to be counted on again * if you crash it’s all over whether it’s on purpose or caused by the panic you will get to point b or you won’t and there are many things you can’t accept but this you accept because you must * what else is there to do but wait for the ground to open and swallow you like a sarlacc? there will be no lonely there inside the sharp-toothed pit of a beast among the digesting bones of others also fallen and in all this the blaring white all your dark even a thousand years is temporary a plummeting plane maybe able to make the emergency landing maybe not but either way the sky-torpedo filled with people can’t keep falling forever |
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Marlin M. Jenkins was born and raised in Detroit and studied poetry in University of Michigan’s MFA program. His writings have been given homes by The Collagist, Four Way Review, The Journal, and Bennington Review, among others. He is an editor for HEArt Online, and you can find him on Twitter @Marlin_Poet.