It doesn’t know boundaries.

It doesn’t understand when it’s appropriate

to flush my cheeks and inflame my chest.

It doesn’t know how to hold back

when my thoughts start spiralling

into a whirl of destructive what-ifs.

It doesn’t know it’s devouring me,

and all those around me,

with its catastrophic clauses.

It doesn’t know it’s not in charge

when it rages like a bull

in the china shop of my mind.

Even when the red rag starts fading,

it doesn’t know the exhausted angst

that still rampages my dreams.

For Day One of NaPoWriMo 2015: a poem about negation