You find me at the coffee shop,
at the movies,
buying comfort food in the grocery store.

You find me on dates,
which is terrible, because on dates
I really try to appear––dateable.

You found me at Disneyland,
in line for The Little Mermaid
Slow Moving Clam Ride.

You found me at parties
so often I stopped celebrating
my own birthday.

You found me on an airplane,
in the arms of the medic,
after the plane stopped on the runway

and turned around to let me off.
Don’t worry, the medic said,
It’s just a panic attack,

as if that would comfort me,
to be told I am the enemy,
to know my body is its own stalker.
Last week, you found me on stage,
In the middle of a poem
Chewed the hairs on the back of my neck
Until I couldn’t hear the words coming out of my mouth
Until I wasn’t even there

Do you know how hard it is to read a poem
When you’re in another state
googling, sudden onset asthma
or how many bugs are in the human body?

Is it possible to be eaten alive
while an audience is all eyes asking,
Are OK? Are you OK? Are you OK?

No, never.

But I am creative,
so when I can’t breathe
I tell myself, It’s fine.

That’s just my heart
giving my sternum a high five
fifty times a second.

After the show I said to my friend,
that was so humiliating.
Did I look like a goat giving birth in a mall?
Yes, she says.
But also like someone who had fallen
Though an iced over lake and was screaming
To find the hole they fell through
To take a breath.
I think every good artist
makes their audience uncomfortable.
I’d hoped to do that with my politics

and not my body flailing
like the about-to-be-dead-girl
in a teenage horror flick,

my own spine curling into the claw
that strips me down to my day of the week panties––
and it’s always Doomsday.

If you’ve never had a panic attack,
there’s a good chance you’ve been an ass
to someone who has.

It makes sense that JUST RELAX
would feel like a helpful thing to say
if oxygen has never been over your head,

if your body has never become its own corset.
At the restaurant I say, I have a small bladder,
because it’s less awkward than saying, My parachute

didn’t open when I left the house
and I prefer the privacy of bathroom stalls
when falling towards my death
at the speed of utter darkness.
what pisses me off
is that this ever got misnamed weakness
Do you know how much courage it takes to live through this shit?
To know the apocalypse
is on the other side

of the front door,
and still–– I reach
for the knob.

To step towards the terror.
Its promised jaw.
To scrape your boots on the welcome mat.
To tell yourself fear
Is the seat of fearlessness.
Even when you’re falling through the ice that is never
Been weakness. That is the bravest thing I have ever done in my life.