Earwig.

Anxiety's an infestation of the mind,
it lays its eggs under my skin, securing a foundation for the home where it will rear its kin. 

It is the black widow of doubt, and, simultaneously, its web; the venom in her sac, and yet, the prey within in her net. 

When sleeping fears are struck awake, they grin whilst baring fangs, delighted to claim their stake now that it's witching hour. 

The eerie thing about irrationality is that it isn't self-aware at all, as it stops to convince us that like a candlelit living room, we also have no power.

Untherapeutic thoughts can seem like millipedes, whose rows of feet can be felt as they compete in the Olympic games that are being held inside our chests as we concede defeat. 

There are schools of thought that somehow exist believing the past can't be relived. 

If that's the case, then I'm ready to take the world by storm as the owner of its first and only time machine. 

Unless, instead, I submit the termites who take tenancy in me when trauma hits as my receipts.

Intelligent as it might seem, insanity is adept at being quite obscene.

Currently it is a caterpillar who's built their cocoon within the fragile forests of my overripe emotions.

Dangerously close to the edge, even one misstep could force me to burst into a binge-eating, body-dysmorphic butterfly.

Pestered by its petulance, and its lack of diplomacy; without tact, and without warning, it arrives like an entitled ant.

Nattering like gnats and nettles, it chirps the loudest, yet has the least to say. 

It's a busy worker bee in bonded labour, and also its commanding queen who dials me on the daily though I've already disconnected the only phone number that it knows.