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Room full.
Crowded and unbare.
People walk everywhere.

People speaking.
So clamorous.
Unaware of their words.

Vision sinking.
Blurry and unfocused.
Unaware of my surroundings.

Tapping. Tapping. Tapping.
Tapping my side. Tapping.
Tapping my feet. Tapping.
Tapping. Tapping. Tapping

Heavy breathing.
Face red and hot.
Hands shaking.
Feeling nervous.

Focusing on myself,
instead of the room.
Inside of myself,
instead of the room.

Asking myself:
Where am I?
What is happening?

Snapping back into reality.

Voices become clear.
Vision is focused.
Fear going away.

Words from the Author – Caitlyn Batterbee
I wrote this poem to describe someone being in a noisy room full of people. I noticed, myself ,that I tend to “escape reality” by fidgeting and unfocusing my vision to help my anxiety or being overwhelmed. I find myself most of the time having to take a moment and calm down so I can retrace my steps and finish what I was doing, and i’m sure a lot of other people can feel the exact same way.

Revision Decision:
When I originally did this it was a prompt for creative writing we were doing. It was very long at first, but looking back on it I noticed that I can make the poem very simple while still being able to strongly replicate those emotions I was originally pinpointing. I also went through and replaced simple words with bigger, more descriptive words to help the readers have a real feel for what this poem is about.