Stuck In Traffic

By Peter Harris

I haven't cried on the drive to work in many

months. My therapist often asks me to describe

how I feel, to help connect my mind to my body.

I always struggle with describing emotions in a sensory way. 

So sitting here in traffic, in this moment of

vulnerability, I

thought I'd try to explain how I feel:

I feel like my ribcage is made of glass and with

every breath I might shatter.

Tiny cracks threaten to spread,

Like ice across a frozen lake.

And I swear the world will hear it when I finally

break.

The lump in my throat tapped into my blood supply like a cancer. 

Growing rapidly, viscerally, uncomfortably.

It presses on nerves and constricts my airway.

Walls made of muscle, the ceiling of bone,

I'm buried alive in a body of my own.

The voice in my mind is no longer coherent, 

the screams of a lobster placed in a pot. 

Torturous and inhumanely hot, 

clawing the sides to escape the boil.

No silence, no stillness, no space to be free.

Just screaming that burns and blisters through me.

The temperature keeps rising, I cannot release.

Stuck in traffic is such a metaphor. All I want to do is move forward, 

but I'm trapped by forces outside my control,

I'm surrounded yet somehow forgotten. 

Everyone sees my car

but no one sees the crying mess behind the tinted glass 

who just wants to be anywhere else 

and nowhere all at once.

I feel like my skin once two sizes too big,

Begins to sink and swallow until my bones

protrude.

A slowly desiccating shell hardening around me.

I see the zipper pulled up on the body bag my

skin has become, until no light gets through to

my soul.

I kick and punch as much as the cramped space

will allow, but no one is looking for me.

No missing persons file.

The outside world still sees me smile,

so why would I expect a search party.

I wake up several times each morning.

No motivation to kick the covers back and start the uninspiring day.

Regardless of how inspiring the day actually is.

I stare blankly out the window as a car crawls in a merge.

And I realise even consciousness wakes up

several times a minute. I slip down from my own

awareness over and over,

Like a child down a playground slide.

And with effort I climb the ladder back to the top

of knowing,

only to slide down once more

At no effort at all

to where the brain fog calls.

The space behind my eyes throbs.

Each tear squeezed like juice from a lemon,

acid burning the trail down my face it leaves behind,

until my head is nothing but rind,

wrung out, stinging, empty.

But my skull pounds heavier still, 

like a hand pump groaning in the desert,

dragging water that refuses to rise from the well.

These I feel and more,

As I finally put my foot to the floor,

Escaping the congestion and out onto open roads.

This marks the time to cover my load.

Like a tradie does to his trailer 

I conceal the baggage I tow.

No one at work can know, my family must

believe I continue to grow.

But my endocrine system only knows how to

sow

A garden of weeds, not unlike those I poison

and hack in my day job.

Waiting for the day the blade I hold to fell a tree

I instead turn to mark the end of me.

By Peter Harris