Andrea Gibson

Ode to the Public Panic Attack

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.

from Lord of the Butterflies (2018)

Said the Wishing Well

It has been years

since anyone has come

for water,

but there is still a bucket here

and it is always full.

Thirst is such a simple thing

to heal. The first time a coin fell

I thought it was a gift,

a strange gift,

a small piece of copper

carved with the face

of a sad man.

Then I heard the boy

praying in the wrong direction.

Why do they so often laugh

when they cry? Who taught them

to be ashamed of needing

more water?

I never know their names.

People, in their wanting,

are only what they are

to another: a sister, an enemy,

a mother who blames herself

for everything but still believes in god.

It is not what I wanted,

even in my loneliness, to be rich

with what they long for, to shine

with what they are sure they need,

to watch their soft bodies wilt

from not drinking

what has always

been here.

from Lord of the Butterflies (2018)

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