Today I came up to my front door,
Fear lying on the stoop.
He just lay there looking up,
eyes staring at me.
He changed every time I blinked
to make him go away,
which he didn’t, making me
more frantic because I had ice cream
in my grocery bag that would melt
if I didn’t put it in the freezer.
He was a shape shifter
He looked like a worried line
on the brow of my checkbook,
like my oldest daughter
warbling her songs in California
without health insurance,
like my husband’s coming stress test,
wires strung all over the stoop
like clogged arteries,
easy to trip over.
Fear wouldn’t get out of the way,
just lay there shifting.
This might have gone on forever,
the ice cream soaking the bag.
But I stepped over him,
went into the house
shut the door hard on him.
Put down the grocery bags,
the ice cream in the freezer.
Looked at the kitchen clock
saw that it was time
to pick up my grandson from school,
his single-dad father
working late again.
I thought of escaping out the back door,
but went out the front.
Stepped over Fear
and went right on my way.
Originally published in The Literary Nest