Fear Makes Me a Modern Person

Scared of ageing. Scared of no job. Scared of misplaced career progression. Scared of branching, regime, anxiety, regrets, my own inventions. Scared of people who ask deep, prying questions. Scared of the cold. Scared of beautiful objects, so scared of beautiful objects. Scared of professionalisation. Scared of heights. Trust issues. Sleep. Scared of sleep. Scared of sleeplessness. Scared of the ratch. Weight. Inertia. Defeat. The continuity of rivers. Going and going and going. Scared of lightning. Saturation. Holidays. Aren’t we meant to be doing things. The way a new house feels when you move all of your boxes into it. Rent. Scared of my belongings. Accumulation. My friends scare me. My siblings scare me. The people I fuck scare me. I’m scared of checkouts. Scared of green beans and tampons at sixty miles an hour. Scared of what’s happening to supermarkets. Visible riverbeds, the late snow, the rock fall, the cobwebs spun across shrubs in isolation, the first raindrops, the tracks of animals, fords paths that have fallen into disrepair, losing stuff forgetting belonging, disaster after disaster. I am ready for catastrophe. Catastrophe, come at me. Scared I’m over-prepared. Scared of apathetic catastrophism. What incredible sensations, what sense of freedom, what release. Crying with laughter. Crying. Doing this every day, all of this, in the soupy rich sadness of life. I’d like to get really more. I’d like to burst through saying, ‘here I am, finally, here I am.’