Anxiety

The Drowning House- A Poem

It begins with a trickle—
a faucet left running in some hidden vein.
Soon the carpet bruises dark,
and the floorboards sigh under water’s weight.

I learn to navigate by breath.
The kitchen is gone,
pots and knives, swimming like startled fish.
The bathroom is a cruel mirror,
It’s glass fogged with drowning.
I cannot open the nursery door.
to see toys drifting,
The rocking chair overturned,
would be to admit what I’ve already lost.

Some rooms still breathe.
The bedroom is an island of pillows,
The living room coughs air through vents.
I climb corners,
gasp at ceiling beams,
grateful for one more lungful of time.

The house is me.
Every room a rib,
Every window an eye.
Water presses harder,
glass flexes,
light filters through like stained glass—
holy, terrible.
I ask myself:
Is this baptism?
or erasure?

I hammer boards,
Stuff towels under doors.
The flood ignores me,
swelling in silence,
patient with grief.

Sometimes I long for the end—
to let the tide claim everything,
to stop this half-drowning,
this half-surviving.
Other times I cling to the attic rafters,
find a pocket of air,
a place to believe
that maybe the water will fall back,
leave behind swollen books,
ruined furniture,
but also a chance to breathe again.

For now, I drift room to room,
waiting to learn if the flood
is here to cleanse me
or consume me.