Spring Cleaning

my anxiety lingers on my bedroom furniture
like a fuzzy, gray coat
of dust
and disgust.
it wraps itself around my bed
and confines and straps me in,
like an institutionalized
woman,
to a messy sea of blankets and bedposts
when I feel like the walls
are closing in on my body.
it pries itself on the hinges
of my broken, peeling white
door frame
and squeezes its swollen,
unrelenting body into
the lock of the handle
to make sure I know
the escape routes are down.
it settles on the front side
of my flimsy old mirror
and coats my reflection
in such a thick layer of
grime and
hideous hallucination—
that i believe I am a goblin at best.
it creeps into the cracks of my ceiling
and I am desperately afraid
it is seeping into the other
rooms of this tiny, tiny
silent
home.
but mother tells me to clean.
we have guests coming over.

—By Savannah Bradley