I’m Not Going Down Easy

You can swarm my dreams

You can mimic those long ago days

by the sound of the wind.

The calendar can read the same date

making me look over my shoulder

in shades of black and white.

Year after Year

you can remind me that I never

received the memo that it’s over.

That I was released from twenty years of tyranny.

Go ahead and remind me that I’m still waiting.

That all the IQ points don’t matter

when it comes to stored fear in the body.

You hold me in a grip of fear for Now? Then? When?

You make me want to crawl out of

this anxiety-ridden body and mind

and watch it crumple on the floor.

Fighting the messages, programming designed

to keep the illness safely tucked in the cells

of my body and mind.

Alert, ready for the next time.

You’ll have your way with me.

You’ll make my life uncomfortable

for days and weeks at a time.

Pawing at, and choking as the skeleton hands of the past rise up;

Those bony cold hands gripping tight around my neck.

You make me question all reality

You, you nasty PTSD

You try, and sometimes succeed

at chipping away at my health for days and weeks at a time

leaving me wobbly, unsteady, and questioning.

But

As I’ve told you before, I’m telling you again

with the same resolve as the fiercest warrior

“Go ahead and try to swallow me, you nasty PTSD

I will never go down without a fight.”

The storm will pass

My illness and I will again find a way to cohabitate.

It will lurk quietly; resting, retreated

And I’ll find comfort in the knowledge that when it emerges again

and the cold begins to ooze up my spine

that I’ll never go down easy.

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©Alexis Rose, image source: Pexels

Thank you for reading my books: If I Could Tell You How It Feels, and Untangled, A Story of Resilience, Courage, and Triumph