Anxiety and her mother
- Dec 9, 2022
- 2 min read
by Tristan Richards
We do not text often, but sometimes, you ask me, Did you hear
about the bank robbery? The shooting? The girl who disappeared?
Your hand-me-down fear shows up in so many places that sometimes I forget it is not mine. My fear is more buzzing than distant, close enough to touch instead of living on
the nightly news. This is not to say that my fear is not momentous enough to flash across a tv screen, but when you stare as hard as I do, eventually everything goes blurry. I cannot make out the shape of my anxiety, but it is always with me, pressing in. Your fear is the only thing
you share with me, though sometimes it presents itself in memory instead of current event. You remind me how a single moment can stab but forget to remove the knife after it ends. I could map my experience of the world with places that have held my panic. Slid down the wall
behind my office. The hole in my grandparents’ driveway. The front porch of a pandemic holiday. The backyard. The green slide. Outside a glittery cabin with a boy I met that night. I don’t tell you when I leave my city anymore. I can’t hold the weight of your fear if I stop
for groceries. Our fears have always butted up against each other, though they grew in the same place. I talk to my fear and wonder if this is what it was always supposed to feel like to talk to you. When I tell it about all the things I am feeling, I never wonder if it is listening.
Tristan Richards (she/her) is a poet and student affairs professional from Minnesota. She is the author of two self-published chapbooks: Not All Challenges Are For Us (2022) and The Year Was Done Right (2019). Her poems have been published in Preposition: The Undercurrent Anthology, on the Mankato Poetry Walk & Ride, and in Firethorne. In 2022, Tristan facilitated daily poetry writing workshops throughout the month of April for National Poetry Writing Month. She holds an MA in Leadership in Student Affairs from the University of St. Thomas and a BA in Communication Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College. You can find her on Instagram at @tristanwritespoems or at tristanwritespoems.weebly.com
