Poetry. Imposter Syndrome. Norse Mythology
Serpent in Your Mind: A Norse Psychology Poem
This Creature Names You: Imposter in Your Own Mind.

You are Midgard, only one of nine worlds. You cannot see beyond your boundaries. Cannot conceive of the image stone, rune-cast mind-circling and massive serpent. slithering and coiling, oiling in the darkness of you.
This creature names you: imposter in your own mind. You are only one world, middling and mundane. Above you rides the long boats in the dark sky ocean. Raiders built of ceramic muscles, shining with sea spray Urged by the thin woman with a staff curled with silver Undoubted men and women, fearless, surging into the unknown, where all is for the taking.
This is not you. Jörmungand encircles you, tightens his caress around your deep-world mind Weaving along the sea floor, rotten in the cold but calm under-ocean placid are you, lulled by the hissing in the silence of the room
An ouroboros coiled around you, squeezing joy from the breath you take. Oil is Jörmungand’s clam, cold skin, holding sway over near emptiness. Crumbling vertebrae and ropes of veins And the memory of the flesh that was once thick and solid.
Was it? It is so long ago, you hardly remember. Bound you are, by the snake of failed things, Of joyless spaces, of empty husks. Old as fear. This Midgard Serpent. This judgment, coiled around your soul. You cannot breathe. You are no Thor. You will not resist Jörmungand. You will not stand beneath the poison sky and defy him. You will not walk the nine paces before your death
You are only Midgard. But Ragnarök will come soon enough
First published Horror Writers Anthology 2018
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