I sit here thinking, supposed to be working,
looking like working, but thinking,
closed in by windows with metal frames
and a wooden door with twelve window panes
of twelve by twelve, shrinking from the searing
orange and black and wicked violet of all of the people
who are buzzing all around for the ice cream social,
fully understanding that one of my sidebar sicknesses
is fear of social situations, boiling in my insanity,
shrinking from my nothingness, understanding
that when there is no escape, when the fire door is blocked,
I am as dead as the tan brick on the face of the building
across the street, which is foreboding in its effort
to keep me from running off the rails and crashing my train
into a grandmother’s little yellow house with bright yellow shutters.

When accused of having a phobia, I feel one point four
feet tall. It’s okay for other people to have phobias
but I am astonished at how stupid I could be
to have a phobia.
Normies don’t have phobias.
Normies always feel good
about themselves.
I work hard
to feel good
about myself,
but I am
not sure
if I will recognize it
if it ever comes to me in my eternal hell.

The daggers of irony, of my Catch-22, knowing that I boil
in my self-hatred because I am too scared to go be with
the people, and at the same time, I am fearful to go be
with the people because I boil in my self-hatred and the
striking hammer-blows of knowing I can never be good enough.