The fear is four inches wide and sits by my heart.
Just down, to the right, it perches with the presence of a clutch of angry vipers tied in a ball.
They sleep; but not for long. They wake
and my life is filled again with writhing hate. As
their bodies wind together they make dark cold liquid run through my insides.
Dripping onto my stomach, provoking eruption.
They stretch down each arm, lifting with a forked lick the hairs they find there.
They turn, and now they have created gravity. A superpresent
force that inverts me, makes the fear my centre, my down, my earth.
All is now in thrall to the fear.
It wins. I orbit it.
A helpless fleshy satellite flung round for an eternity by my own folly.