- “The Blood Underneath My Fingernails”
It starts before I know it has started,
some invisible hand reaching inside my chest
and closing around everything that keeps me alive.
My heart forgets that it is only supposed to beat,
decides instead that it needs to escape.
I tell myself I am breathing,
but my lungs don’t believe me.
Every breath stops somewhere in my throat,
too shallow to reach the places begging for air,
and suddenly breathing feels like something
I have to remember how to do.
My hands curl into fists without permission,
fingers folding inward until my nails find skin.
I squeeze harder because I need something solid,
something I can control while everything inside me
is running toward an emergency that does not exist.
There is danger everywhere and nowhere.
My body knows something terrible is happening
even when my mind cannot name what it is.
I am trapped inside an alarm that will not stop ringing,
searching the room for the fire
while smoke fills a place no one else can see.
My heart is too fast.
My chest is too tight.
The walls feel closer than they were a moment ago,
and I cannot decide whether I need to run
or curl myself into something small enough
that fear might somehow overlook me.
So I grip harder.
My nails break through the skin of my palms,
leaving tiny crescents where panic has taken hold.
I don’t notice the pain at first.
There are too many other things screaming inside me,
too many parts of my body convinced
that I am about to die.
Then I feel the wetness.
Blood gathers beneath my fingernails,
warm against the places where my fingers meet my palms,
and somehow even that does not make me let go.
I need the pressure.
I need the sting.
I need proof that my hands are still attached to me
because the rest of my body no longer feels like mine.
My thoughts become fragments,
unfinished sentences colliding into each other.
Something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something is wrong.
I cannot explain what,
and that somehow makes it worse,
because how do you escape something without a face?
I am terrified of dying.
Terrified of fainting.
Terrified of losing control of my own body.
Terrified that this time the panic is telling the truth
and everyone who says it will pass
will realize too late that it wasn’t panic after all.
My stomach turns.
My skin cannot decide whether it is burning or freezing.
My fingers tremble inside their own violence,
still digging deeper, still holding tighter,
as though I could crush the fear between my palms
if I just squeezed hard enough.
There is no dignity in this moment.
There is only survival.
Only air dragged desperately through a throat that feels closed,
only a heartbeat pounding against bone,
only the terrible awareness of every second
stretching itself into something unbearable.
Eventually my fingers begin to loosen,
not because I have conquered anything,
but because they are exhausted too.
My palms open slowly, shaking,
revealing the little wounds I made
while trying to survive something no one could see.
There is blood underneath my fingernails.
There are half-moons carved into my skin,
my hands aching from how desperately
I tried to hold myself together.
My chest still hurts. My throat still burns.
My body is still waiting for permission
to believe that the danger has passed.
And afterward I sit there emptied out,
sweat cooling against my skin,
breathing like I have just crawled out of deep water,
staring at the evidence in my hands
of a war that happened entirely inside me.
The room looks exactly the same.
But I don’t.
I am still shaking beneath my skin,
still listening for the next impossible heartbeat,
still afraid to trust the air entering my lungs.
And underneath my fingernails is the blood
from how tightly I held on
when every part of me was certain
I was about to disappear.
FRD 2026