Broken Parts

Behold the broken parts in the mutiny of me against me, anxiety and self loathing creeping in to slide foul and hateful hands down my shaking spine to squeeze my frightened lungs.
Witness my mind against me, pushing me down to drown, smothering.
This is a panic attack, PTSD.
My front brain and back brain living disconnected, giving me flack.
Witness me, the trainwreck, falling from my rusty tracks.

Witness the panic, hands shaking and tears snaking down my cheeks as I curl up, pathetic and small, gasping, mouth gaping.
Witness anxiety consuming me while I lay aching, grasping the sheets.
Witness me left broken and meek; I am, to my anxiety, free for the taking.

I am left in my dark, unable to witness the world outside from within.
I don't see the hand darting out to grab my anxiety by the scruff, shake it, and throw it back again.
I am shaking, trapped within, while somebody else smothers the voice of mutiny over the course of an hour; because that is what friends do.

I can't even listen from within as a friend scolds the mutineer, but I marvel later at the way they so gently choked the voice and defend me; even seem to hold me dear.

Read back and watch the mutiny seep back through the floorboards to sleep and steep again in their fetid bitterness.
Behold the gentle and creative hands that snuffed out a self destructive flame, that quieted the mutiny.
Simply because this is what friends do.
You trust each other with your awkward, you do the scary things; you open up.

I am left to shake, quake, and wonder, for if so easily they handled mine, how often has perhaps their own mental mutiny torn them asunder?
How often has their own hate choked their hope and wheezed down their neck?
Has theirs too traced it with rope?

I shake, marveling at the time and kindness they took to chase the desert dog off where I couldn't put him to sleep.
I can't help but weep at the fact the broken parts were there, mutiny laid bare, and somehow... I'm addressed still as whole.

The anxiety lingers, another mutiny for another day, this shaking faith in the fact they can still behold my face as a whole beneath the broken parts.