Adjusting Sails
by Abbey Leibert

Water is a universal solvent.
I will not be left unresolved.

I can be free,
let the water flow.

Worry like a ship
stuck in a bottle
kept in check by my
ribcage.

The water rises,
competing with
an ascending airplane.

My lungs contract,
masts crack under pressure.
The water rushes into the fractures
with the spirit of glue.

My sails expand,
lungs capture the wind,
disguised as direction.

The water rises, buckets
swallow the excess,
but I cannot.

Deckhands burned by
fleeting ropes, soothed by
the ocean’s mist.

I lay down on the deck,
like an anchor to
the ocean floor.

Breathe in the smell of
nothing is permanent.

~

Abbey Leibert is part spider. She has eight eyes that make her a lethal predator, especially at night, when she finally decides to sit down and write. Many times she will sit at her computer, anticipating how she will find a way to coherently link together her thoughts into a narrative. After thoughtful deliberation, she will spend hours crafting and braiding her narratives like a web. Plucking at certain parts to see how the sound vibrates back. She has an innate urge to intently choose at what points her ideas will connect, allowing her to create an intricate web of lustrous spider silk that will capture an audience, literally.

Image credit: Abbey Leibert, 2025

Author’s Note: Lately, my anxiety has felt like an unrelenting storm inside of me. When I close my eyes to envision the feeling, these images from the poem are what I see. It feels like the weight of the anxiety continues to rise and rise. It continues to amount all the way up to my throat until I can’t swallow it anymore, and all I can do is cry. As the water tumbles down my cheek, it is like a gentle cupping around it, reminding me it is okay to cry. It is just an outpour of emotion with nowhere to go. Succumbing to anxiety in moments feels like a diversion from the original path, but you are still on the ship, moving closer to your destination, wherever or whatever that may be.