DSM – 5
Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental health disorders 5th ed
Kirsty Crawford
Do you have time? Can I tell you how much I have learned about fear?
about hyperarousal
fight flight freeze
allostatic load hormonal dysregulation
autonomic nervous system
parasympathetic post-traumatic
eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing
How I learned to sit between my companions
intrusive obsessive thought loops
post-natal depressions psychotic laced notions
intrusive obsessive thought loops
anxiety dizziness tinnitus nausea blurred vision
intrusive obsessive thought loops loops loops
how I learned of my titanium resolve
to float with it all to not get sucked under
The sun has been here for weeks
I lie down on the ochre-green
blades and drift, become an underpass
below a highway full of bees
of all winged buzzing creatures
hovering passing flitting past the closed hood of my eyes
Inside my child naps
in a cool calm cocoon
safe in his crib
curled cub in a dark room
To think there was a time
where I paced and howled
a time where time itself moved like
the earth’s crust and I was charged
with a powerful paranoid current
but today I coasted, sleep caught me in dreams
a grasshopper radiating
under a perfect primary blue sky.
Kirsty Crawford
Kirsty Crawford is a conservationist, writer and community engagement manager. She has a BA in Creative Writing and an MSc in Wildlife Biology and is dedicated to exploring creative and collaborative crossovers between science and poetry. She was recently commended in the Magma Poetry Competition and has been published in Poetry Scotland, Motherlore, and Meniscus Journal plus featured in anthology collections by Speculative Books and Motherhood Uncensored.