fear cradle

how you obsessed
you had AIDS
months after
testing negative
in college
reading articles
night after night
instead of studying

how years before that
you were certain
you were pregnant,
felt a pulse in your 
belly while bleeding
month after month

and you thought
you ruined your body
with the tattoo got
from the dove 
on his cup, stayed 
up late in the night
panicked at the action
researching how to
remove it

all of the parasites
real and imagined
all of the rituals,
and now this

you wonder if 
they were all part 
of a way to manage
this or this is a continuum
of that or both

both/and
both/and
both/and

the feeling one is bad
the attempt to make sense
the clutch of fear
to circle around
something to hold you
in the vortex