Sara Watkins

I am my own undoing

Today I had a panic attack in an MRI machine,
because I was thinking about how I’ve
never had a panic attack in an MRI machine.
I exhaust even myself.
It must be difficult to be around me.
Sometimes I won’t feel anxious for a while,
so I’ll think:
“Hey! I haven’t felt anxious in a while,”
then boom, there it is—
like a room filling too quickly with smoke,
I am choking on it.
It is thick around every part of me
and demands my attention.
I’ve been told people either:
1) fight; 2) flight; 3) freeze.
Meanwhile, there’s me.
I am screaming and kicking as
I try to escape but go nowhere,
like a penguin facing a seal in the modern-day Arctic;
It’s hardly a battle I can win,
I couldn’t fly if I wanted to,
and I am sweating my tail feathers off,
but holy hell am I trying.
There is no greater truth,
or beauty in the madness,
there is only endless, endless
chaos of my own creation.

Turn My Ugly Into Modern Art

The hesitant nature of it all
just knocks me the fuck out:
How hard is it to say, “This is too much”?
Very hard.

Achievements are just another way to decorate blank walls;
who among you has the power to define success?
It is certainly not the strong.

Something awful happened,
but I forget what it was,
and somehow that makes it worse.
I read once that things get worse
before they get better, but
sometimes they just get worse.

I imagine I am turning all of my distress into
macaroni garland to hang from the walls of my house:
“Look! I made this,” I tell them.
“It’s ugly, and I don’t like to look at it,” they reply.

Image ID: the shape of a sad face constructed from black text on a white background. One eye is comprised of 8 repetitions of the word ‘sick’ arranged in a horixzontal diamond, the other a mirror made of the word ‘why’. Both have a single ‘i’ in place of a pupil. A downward ‘cant’ replaces a nose, and a cupid’s bow of ‘get better’ stands in for the mouth.

Sara Watkins (she/her) is an editor, author, UCTD-haver, and the editor-in-chief of Spoonie Press, which is devoted to publishing work by chronically ill, disabled, and neurodivergent creators. She is the winner of the 2022 MASKS Literary Magazine Story Award. Recent publications include work in Wordgathering, Vast Chasm, and Bitchin’ Kitsch. Contact: www.sarawatkins.net or @saranadebooks on Twitter and Instagram.