Brenna Twohy’s spoken word poem Anxiety: A Ghost Story captures the restless, all-consuming nature of anxiety. She uses humor and haunting metaphors to compare living with anxiety to being trapped in a horror story. The fear is both familiar and relentless.

Twohy opens with a playful critique of Goosebumps protagonists who ignore red flags and walk straight into danger. But then, she shifts—revealing that anxiety works the same way. It distorts logic, turns safety into a threat, and makes every decision feel like a life-or-death gamble. “My anxiety is a camera that shows everyone I love as bones,” she confesses. This illustrates how anxiety preemptively grieves losses that haven’t even happened.

One of the most striking lines comes when she speaks of love: “To love me is to love a haunted house. It’s fun to visit once a year, but no one wants to live there.” This brutally honest admission shows that anxiety doesn’t just exhaust the person experiencing it. It shapes relationships, making intimacy feel like an intrusion into a space already crowded with ghosts.

But Twohy doesn’t seek a cure or a savior. Instead, she celebrates love that doesn’t try to exorcise the ghosts but makes space for them. Love that “turns all the lights on,” that plants basil on the windowsill, that doesn’t run when the walls shake.

“If you’re staying, then you better make room.” This powerfully reimagines what it means to be loved—not as someone to fix, but as someone to understand.

For those who live with anxiety, this poem reflects the quiet battles fought every day. And for those who don’t, it’s an invitation—to listen, to understand, and to hold space for the ghosts we all carry.

Read the full poem here

Watch Brenna Twohy recite this poem here

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Featured Image: Sydney Latham on Unsplash