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?
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!)
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.
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.
Each tenterhook
in my being
pulls on a single question:
Will I be able to survive extreme disappointment?
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
And one by one
They drop like dried up petals
And then
As the fabric relaxes and folds
I lift up and fly away?