Your Anxiety
thin as a shadow, masters tripod- headstand-tripod- roll for third grade gym class by practicing for hours in the grass in the backyard, wearing a path there, and, when it rains, crushing the maroon carpet in the family room with the same motion. Triumphant, she decides to stick by your side forever. When you can't sleep, you balance on your toes on one side of the metal daybed frame, she balances on the other, and you summersault through each other, trading places all night long.
Your Anxiety Joins the Cast of SNL
She isn't actually written into any skit, so she makes her own magic. She peels back a corner of the wallpaper on the suburban family room set, and you can just make out her eyes moving back and forth over the married couples' heads. Their paranoia about the neighbors watching them feels real. She wraps herself in aluminum foil and crinkles along the mirror at the back of the gymnasium scene, comically warping the actors' reflections as they confess their body image issues. She crawls on her hands and knees under the white linen tablecloth in the fancy restaurant breakup skit, banging into the man's knees and making his anger during the fight scene have a real wounded edge to it. You glimpse her again in the final live moments of the show, dancing frantically at the periphery of the crowd and high-fiving herself over and over again.
Your Anxiety Books a VRBO
She is thrilled and terrified to be in someone else's house, where she moves silently from room to room as if someone is listening. She isn't interested in the view, but spends hours sitting in the closets, smelling the cracked board games and touching the frayed sleeves of windbreakers. She slides under the bed, inhaling the dust and dog hair. She takes all the mismatched pots and pans out of the cupboards beneath the kitchen counter and stretches out there, segmented like the beautiful assistant in a magician's show, head in one cabinet, feet in another, and falls asleep on the sticky wood to the sound of mice gnawing on the supports underneath the floorboards.
