What Scares Me
by Jan Heimlich
Do I scare easily?
I’m scared right now.
I worry that you won’t like me
And call me a silly sow.
I’m scared of yoga positions that hurt my knees
And men that only want to please.
I can’t trust ladies with perfect hair
And toddlers that stare
I bemoan runny scrambled eggs,
And what will happen now that I’ve eaten that gray chicken leg?
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I’m scared the government will take over our lives
That they’ll blind our eyes
Stick guns up our noses
(It’s the trauma they normalize!)
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I could laugh in the face of fear
But instead
I take a deep breath
I hug those who are near and drink Pour Farm beer.
Tenterhooks
A tenterhook is a small, L-shaped iron fastener.
Tenterhooks are used to stretch or dry fabric on a wooden frame called a tenter.
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The expression “to be on tenterhooks” means to feel anxious
​
waiting to hear news or anticipate something that’s about to happen
​
with apprehension.
The analogy is that
one’s nerves
- like the fabric -
are stretched thin and taught.
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Each tenterhook
in my being
pulls on a single question:
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Will I be able to survive extreme disappointment?
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I fear that the fabric will finally
tear against the tension
​
the frame will fall in on itself
and I will be left raw and exposed.
But perhaps
before that
​
the tenterhooks
exhausted
begin to loosen
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And one by one
They drop like dried up petals
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And then
As the fabric relaxes and folds
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I lift up and fly away?