This is inescapable pain. This pain burns. It freezes you in your tracks. This pain is a cold that somehow burns, singes hair on the back of your neck. It is never a sudden feeling, but it grows. It starts at your skin and works its way to your core. You feel its pressure rising and expanding in your chest, in deep gasps for air, but you can’t control it.
This is the humor and misery we torment ourselves with. There is an irony to it . You try to run, but seem to be stuck in place. When you want to fight you can’t bring yourself out of hiding. Curiosity draws you in but that little voice in your head pulls you back, and tells you to be afraid.
This is the unconquerable fight. It is a horrible thing, a monster that will never be defeated. This thing will overpower you in every way, will bring even the strongest person to their knees.
This is something in all of us. You could call it a million different things, but it has only one true name.
Fear.
Visual Art by Racheal Kramer
Poem by Emily Fraser