even if you're looking for it, you probably won't see it.
it's the leg bounce,
the shaky hand,
pacing routine.
it's the darting eye,
that one crack on the surface:
striking red against a haggard white
tentacles
of a monster much larger than it reveals itself to be;
larger than you could ever imagine.
it's the minusculity of its effects that conceal the monstrous ferocity of its presence.

behind the leg bounce and the shaky hand
is a heart pumping raw neuroticism, an average gallon per minute, sixty per hour, one-thousand-four-hundred-and-forty per day.
behind the alarming red eyes
are faded, hazy, dark blue, sleepless night skies, accented with petrified stars.
they are darting, scrambling for reality
in a world that means no harm, but a brain with an itching trigger finger.
and behind the pacing
there is last resort; an attempt to sweep up broken shards of normalcy
and glue them back together
even though they will never fit quite like they used to.