Things That Scare Me

Ria Kovbasa -
ℹ️
Originally written in 2018.
  1. Writing this poem
  2. My tea mug when it is too hot to hold and I feel like I might drop it before I make it back
  3. Wondering if I'm pretentious
  4. My shoelaces when they aren't tied enough and I think I might sprain my ankle running
  5. When I get random aches on my body
  6. Wondering if I will ever amount to anything by reading and writing
  7. Waking up at night because my chest feels tight and my heart doesn't seem to be working
  8. When my mother used to wake me up at night because her chest felt tight and her heart didn't beat right and she wanted to make sure she didn't die
  9. Cold air of hospitals and shiny metal of doctor's tools.
  10. My fear of doctors, which may as well make me die one day from an undetected tumor
  11. News about my home country
  12. Eating 2-day old leftovers after having read about a guy who died after eating 7-day old pasta
  13. News about the country I grew up in
  14. Seeing the temperature on a thermometer I just used reach the "40 C" mark
  15. News about the country I want to move to
  16. Eating chocolate and thinking of my blood vessels clotting
  17. News about...
  18. Remembering how many times I was hospitalized as a kid
  19. Figuring out limits of what can and cannot be said
  20. Seeing animal abuse posts on Facebook groups dedicated to cute dog memes
  21. Darkness
  22. Going to a restaurant where I can't find a single vegetarian option
  23. Stumbling between languages when I'm tired
  24. Wishing to burn down every circus in existence
  25. Thinking that I support capital punishment
  26. Knowing that I most definitely support capital castration of anyone who ever assaulted someone
  27. Evenings sitting in my room when I was a teen, hearing yelling for hours from the kitchen
  28. Getting groped on a train or a bus
  29. Seeing men follow me with their eyes
  30. Seeing men follow me with their cars
  31. My childhood friend saying she didn't leave after her boyfriend hit her
  32. Young teenage girls wishing for a strong man who would protect them from the world
  33. Not being able to find a bathroom for a long time in a new place
  34. Walking into a restaurant just to use their bathroom and hoping not to get kicked out
  35. That time my father got into a shouting match with a waiter who tried to kick me out for wanting to use a bathroom in a restaurant without buying anything
  36. Spiders
  37. My best friend sitting outside the school guidance counselor's office with her parents the day she got diagnosed with depression
  38. Getting asked where I'm from
  39. My mother insisting that I should be more feminine
  40. Octopuses
  41. How I would faint every time I tried to get up in the morning as a kid
  42. Conjugations of the word "octopus"
  43. Any mollusks really, especially snails out on the walkways after rain
  44. Daily nightmares caused by medication
  45. Heights
  46. Closets at night ever since I accidentally watched "The Ring" when I was eight
  47. Exes. Especially my boyfriend's exes.
  48. Comforting hugs, because they make me think of dying
  49. Getting so drunk I can't walk straight
  50. Blood dripping down the arm of a friend after she was cutting herself again
  51. Diagnoses
  52. The DSM
  53. Meteors
  54. Any person with any power over me
  55. When my laptop freezes two minutes before a deadline
  56. Global Warming
  57. Realizing I slept through an alarm
  58. Butterflies and moths.