Recursive Nightmare

Recursive Nightmare began as a stream-of-consciousness prose post witching hour panic attack. Months later, an image kept recurring — inspired by the poem and The Darkest Nights painting: a xenomorph body caught mid-panic attack, dragged down into a tornado of panic, holding its head, surrounded by white noise and static. The canvas became a place where the poem could live, and the poem gave the painting its spine.

The first sketch didn’t include the chestburster. It started as an illustration for an upcoming book, drawn from a line describing panic disorder:

“I sat hunched over, dry heaving and choking on snot and spit, gagging, sweating, shaking, spinning, spitting, panting, and hyperventilating — like an alien fetus was on the verge of bursting through my chest. I see and hear static — white noise — everywhere.”

From there, the recursive nature of panic attacks began to surface: an alien chest nursing an alien, a loop that feeds on itself — and kills itself. Living with a panic disorder is like carrying a parasitoid organism inside you, waiting to burst through the surface again and again.

The figure and storm were built with layered strokes, scratches, and heavy paint, while behind them lies a static background of layered textured acrylic — restless and deliberate, the space where the panic lives inside. A satin varnish locks the paint but keeps the charge alive, echoing how the poem circles the same moment again and again.

Writing and painting fed each other until they landed here — a single frame holding a monster, a panic, and the stubborn act of naming it. The alien shape reached back to The Darkest Nights, and to the way panic can make a body feel foreign — as if something unrecognizable and recognizable is moving through your own blood. It lives with you.

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Artwork Details:

• Title: Recursive Nightmare
• Medium: Acrylic on canvas with layered textured acrylic background
• Size: 24 × 24 inches (artwork)
• Frame: Black gallery frame
• Finish: Satin varnish

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Poem

I feel the tidal waves
as they crash through my shore.
Falling to the floor. Never sure,
till I’m sucked through my trap door.

Thrice a day I’m buried alive.
On and off since I was five.
Heart beating in overdrive.
I feel I’m gonna die. I survive.

Dry heaves, choking on snot n spit.
Cannot breathe. Almost vomit.
Gag. Repeat. Sweaty. Shaking.
Spinning. Spitting. Panting upon waking.

The dread takes a shape.
An albatross. I’m dead weight.
There is no escape.
I awake. It kicks in.

No thought. No care.
Stripped bare. Gasping for air.
Alone in this room.
Dragged down to a sudden doom.

It lives with me like a shadow
through light, with dark, to the gallows.
Any hope, suffocated with despair,
in my recursive nightmare.

I checked my ticket to find
I won the cruel lottery of body and mind.
Blessed with this curse since birth.
Countdown. No marks left on this earth.

Welcome to my panic.
I wish I was manic.
I pinch myself.
A hollow figure,
somebody pull a trigger,
put a bullet in my head.
It’s okay.
I’m already dead.

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