KonikaI acquired these fears perhaps
from dreaming too much, from floating above my head
in a state of child-hooded fugue.
The fear of falling down backwards while trudging up the stairs at 6 pm
– an hour to go before the parental units arrive.
My legs are small and the stairs too tall.
Gravity is the strongest force on Earth, so heavy it compresses
my form into a Lego block – a monolith of dread.
I am hop-scotching under water and nobody can hear me,
Nobody would catch me if I fell
Down the stairs into the open ocean below
that’s got whale-sized alligators
I see their knife-sized teeth and bottomless mouths
hungering for my tiny 6-year-old feet.
The fear of my front-teeth falling out
inside the exam hall – it’s the Math final.
Either one alone I could probably take, but
Together when they come,
it’s double the fun.
I am a sickly teen with milk duds for teeth,
Though I’m not allowed chocolate or candies of any kind.
Bad at Math and full of problems
that cannot be solved
alone in the mind.
The fear of the bathroom drain clogging up
with so much of my ‘barber-shop’ hair
that it finally rises up as a wiry monster
that eats everyone alive
– I run towards it screaming.
I may be the only survivor.
I pick up a scissors and cut
Dark hair, falling down in freshly-shampooed clumps,
disappears from the barber’s floor and ends up
inside the monster again.
Who came first and who is feeding whom?
The monster or the barber! I don’t know which to trust.
The Fear of the school bell ringing,
I am terrified of school ending.
Terrified of the touch of grown men
who will be there every damned day
following me home without fail.
At first I start to cry but I don’t want anyone to
think I am weak or small or alone….
(I know I am but I must learn to turn invisible).
I never let the same man touch me twice.
But there were always new ones
learning my route back from school,
memorising the number of the bus, the car, the taxi,
Anything I took – they were there.
Soon, they knew nobody cared for me,
Their numbers multiplied into groups.
I was too scared for words and the great thing is-
Fear makes me angry, anger makes me fearless,
A Rage bout gives me a way out.
I go on the offense and then make my escape.
Each time, they are taken aback and I run.
My school athletics coach is proud
of my new speed.
He keeps asking me to wear shorter shorts
My over-sized clothes get funny looks,
But I don’t tell him why I do what I do.
I found I had power and I learned to wield it
like a sword and hid it like a treasured secret.
I outsmarted grown men and their gangs,
I threatened to do things I knew
I’d never actually do.
This is why when I finally grew up,
I grew tired.
I gave up
Going out.
The Fear of period blood that would be warm
Gushing like a fountain flowing from somewhere
I was scared to look.
Blood fizzing out my body like a soda can
exploding after being pierced with a hot knife.
A cousin described it as bubbling red lava
That would ooze out for 4-7 days every month
She was supposed to babysit me, but I was not a baby
she said. She told me of acne, hot flashes of pain rippling through her back
but never shared where exactly from so I dreamed often
That women’s backs were volcanic mountains
and the blood came out of their cores and
This is how the ground beneath our forests was made.
The biggest fear came after I accepted that I came to this world a girl
and therefore must “make peace with my place” when
All I’d known was war.
Even before I tumbled out I fought the abortion meds my mother took.
I maybe the only one who knows
I survived because I chose to.
At times I wanted to become belligerent, a self-sure boy.
This being a woman is disorienting.
(I wasn’t sure I wanted it until much later.)
But I wanted to live.
I willed into me a watery softness
that turned my solid skin translucent bit by bit
until one day I felt I turned myself invisible.
And I loved that like any child loves having a superpower.
I became an expert at hiding
my past, my name, my body,
my shame….
If nobody saw me perhaps
- I’d be safe.
Slowly, I went insane
Sleep-walking through my early years.
Later when I awoke in adulthood,
I cried at the feet of my muse – the sleep paralysis demon
The kind where you scream and gasp
but no sound comes out.
You could claw your throat out
But nobody would hear you
Because nobody knows you exist!
I finally felt afraid of my own demonic
self-erasure.
The fear of dreaming too much.
Maybe parts of me are always going to go on dreaming
without me noticing, but I’m no longer
afraid of phobias one – six.
That is somewhat relieving.
This here is a non-exhaustive list of my childhood phobias and dreams.
There’s also dogs and flying roaches
that should have been included in here
but I sort of like their company now.
They’re regular old buddies, so I don’t remember
why I used to be afraid of them in the first place.
Someone should have warned me
about the humans though.
Perhaps in another life,
I will be totally free of fear, free from
My paranoias
Nobody will be able to unsee me
when I lift my pen to write.
I will become all too real.
