Essay on Anxiety

The song says there’s a bee in my bonnet, a birdhouse
in my soul, but really, it’s more like I’m wearing
a trombone as a hat: I can’t see anything and everyone
sounds funny. The air is so cold, people on the Internet
toss boiling water and it turns into snow clouds. In my hair
I’ve woven a honeycomb and my ears are dizzy buzzing.
The only thing I ever say to my neighbor: I’m gonna reset
the wifi. Her response: Got it. This is the script of American
longing. When fresh powder falls under lamplight, I walk
into the street, ungloved, to wet my tongue on it. Three cold coins
dance in my lucky pocket. Corpse pose, I’ve heard, is a kind
of revival, so I sleep on my back, sync my breath to the fog horn.

ξ

"Essay on Anxiety" was first published in Columbia Journal.

Mariya Zilberman is a writer and educator who was born in Minsk, Belarus. She earned her MFA at the University of Michigan, where she currently teaches. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Columbia Journal, and The Kenyon Review, and she is at work on her first poetry collection.

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