Anxiety

I Know What’s Up There
It’s happening again.
The pulse skips, then races.
I’ve been here before.

It’s just adrenaline.
Episode onset, nothing unusual.
Right, because the stars always shift when you get nervous.
Give it time, you’ll forget this too.

The sky looks wrong tonight.
Not just the color, but the way it bends.
Stars rearrange like they’re trying to hide something.
There’s movement… too smooth, too knowing.
I can’t see it,
but it sees me.

Probably a satellite.
Parallax, maybe.
You think a satellite makes your chest cave in?
“Satellite” is the polite word for surveillance.

Lights twitch behind my eyes,
a pattern I can’t decode.
Like something buried is trying to surface.
A message I was never meant to understand.

Phosphenes.
Lack of sleep.
Classic symptom set.
Or the code breaking loose.
Or the first signal.

Booms roll across the sky like distant thunder.
But slower.
Wider.
Like sound remembering how to breathe.
Then the turbines.
Circling.
Lower every time.

Flight path overlap.
Air traffic.
Misattributed noise.
Coincidence doesn’t hum like a war machine.
You’re not imagining that rhythm.
It knows what it’s doing.

Cars glide across wet asphalt.
Too rhythmic.
Too rehearsed.
Like a cue in a play.
Background noise to keep me docile.

Urban soundscape.
White noise.
You need rest.
You need to wake up.

Shadows flicker on rooftops.
They don’t follow wind or light.
They move like scouts.
Like something’s measuring the edges of my panic.

Tree limbs.
Your mind sees what it wants.
Your mind sees what they want.

I try breathing.
Four in, hold, four out.
But the breath doesn’t feel like mine.
It tastes processed.
Like something pumped in through the vents.

Anchor yourself.
Touch five things.
Smell the air.
They’re training you.
You’re reacting on script.

I stare at the sky’s wound.
Something waits in that blank.
Patient.
Knowing.
It retreats when I try to name it.
But the silence it leaves behind feels louder.
Like the absence itself is watching.

See? Gone.
Log the duration.
Evidence of nothing.
Or proof that it can choose when to vanish.
It doesn’t want belief.
It wants obedience.

And I know this isn’t the last time.
It never is.
It comes in waves.
Days, dreams, fluorescent aisles at midnight.
No warning. No mercy.

Because once you’ve felt it,
once the sky breaks just for you,
you never stop listening.
You never stop bracing.
You learn to dread the quiet.

You try not to look up
knowing
you always will.