Short Stories and Poems

Panic of a Scatterbrained Fool

Quiet. It was so quiet... and dark.

My fingers grasped at the empty air;

An expansive nothingness stretching beyond.

Blinking, with open eyes that couldn't see.

Not even my own hand stretched before me,

Reaching for some shred of reality,

To grasp onto.

Trapped in an endless void, a darkened place,

Suspended between time and space.

That was ridiculous, though,

Stuff like that didn't just happen. Right?

And yet here I was, in the nothingness, being embraced.

I was alone with my thoughts.

So many thoughts...

I couldn't possibly delve into them all.

But of course, my brain tried,

It tried so hard to overwhelm me.

But then....

The abyss was pulling the thoughts and images away.

My brain felt like a ball of yarn rolling down the stairs...

The compact structure unraveling as the ball went down. Down. Down.

I wished I could reach out for the yarn and stop it from slipping away,

But every time I pulled the string, the ball just unraveled further.

It resembled nothing of what it once was.

Not that I had much stability, to begin with.

Why was it so empty here?

Yet, so full of matters about which I might worry?

Obviously, my plights and fears,

Were not disappearing in a hurry.

If only I was a cat instead of a songbird.

Cats could keep their thoughts together,

Cats could catch yarn and keep it in their grasp.

When they prowled, they had a goal,

A purpose, something they wanted to accomplish.

And here I was, directionless, at a crossroads.

Songbirds just woke people up early with their annoying chirping.

Songbirds didn't even have thumbs.

Neither did cats, but at least they had a shred of relevance.

My anxiety was evident.

Songbirds couldn't hold mugs,

They couldn't catch yarn balls,

And they couldn't manage stress.

Just like me.

These might seem to be insignificant matters, insignificant words,

But it was easier to worry about this small mess,

Such as prowling cats and thumbless birds,

Than to worry about the surrounding darkness.