the ostrich. Because all the ostriches she’s ever known have been unpleasant
and could kill her and a single Skittle tumbles from my mouth because
imagine. To be afraid
only of a thing encountered and deemed worthy of it.
Everything I fear I am completely unacquainted with.
Except the dentist. But that’s less a fear than an angst, I suppose, given
that I know him and his tactics and only once have my nerves been fried -
literally fried, from gum to cheekbone - at his hand,
so I keep going back. I am afraid of tornadoes,
but not chickens. I’m afraid of vomiting at 30,000 feet,
especially in a window seat, especially
next to a business executive with an overactive Apple Watch
and a crusted snot in the corner of his right nostril that dances with each sleepy breath,
but not of intimacy. Dolls may prove my to be the real outlier here,
but I’d assert that my terror of them is both ancestral
and specifically my grandmother’s doing because no kid should ever,
ever have to move a glassy-eyed, unblinking body
from atop the spare toilet paper roll in the middle of the night
just because she drank too much water before bed.
Some things stay with you
and some don’t. I am afraid of not living,
but not of death. Not anymore.
Maybe my familiarity with a thing actually has nothing to do with it.
I am wrong more often than I am worrying
about how terrible it would be to be lost under the ice. To be buried alive.
At times I’ve been buried by fear. Paralyzed.
For all of second grade, I couldn’t count past eleven.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
8 9 10 11
8 9 10 11
8 9 10 11
until I was found by the custodian, my palms raw and soap-sudded,
a tear caught in the faucet of my eye because I had to count to 20 had to get clean
had to make sure nothing would kill me before tomorrow,
though nothing would kill me before tomorrow
and no one knew what to do with that.
With a child terrified of her own hands.
And what they carry.
And what harm they might cause.