Disquietude

Laura Linford West

My tic: the clicking morse of nails upon
my teeth. The code of it is foreign still.
A coping strategy that works until
my body turns betrayer. Tremors spawn.
Spontaneous pulsations leave my thighs,
send shivers through the tables. Vicious thought
invades my veins—corrosive, overwrought.
The caustic water waits, withheld behind
mascara. Draw my limbs in carefully,
my yellow apprehension taut and thin.
This habit—picking, shaking, breaking skin—
inters the lacerations underneath.