The moment they set upon me is always the same. My body turns into an empty elevator shaft and I sink down inside and disappear.
Once I make it back up, I discover I'm under new management.
When, usually a year or two later, they finish with me, I feel them wash out of me like dark water.
Phobias too. They'll land on me like buzzards and start pecking, then decide they've had enough of me and fly off for tastier carrion. And what do you know, I can breathe again, or drive again. Who knows why? Best not to ask. Best to just leave it alone. "Keep your head down," advises Lyle Lovett in a song for our coming totalitarian times. "For if you do, they'll never know."
Food. Sometimes I eat more and sometimes I eat less. My body waxes and wanes like a slow moon, taking years to change states. I don't know why.
Inside myself, I'm restless; outwardly, I'm still.
I've been told I don't feel like I own my life. But I own my mind. I own these words.
