Anxiety: A Ghost Story by Brenna Twohy We have got to talk about the kids  in all those Goosebumps books.   For example,  if your family vacation   is to an amusement park   called HORRORLAND,  and your station wagon explodes  in the parking lot upon arrival,  maybe  shrugging it off,    buying an extra large popcorn,  and heading straight for   The Deadly Doom Slide  is not your best possible  course of action.    Or,  if you steal a weird camera   from your creepy neighbor’s basement  and every picture you take   shows bad things happening,  like decapitation   and Tofurkey,  and then all the bad things   from the pictures   start happening,  Stop Taking Pictures.    Or,  if you move into your new house  and there are a bunch of small children already living in your bedroom  that your parents cannot see,  maybe,  don’t just grab a juice box  and go play in the cemetery  that  is  in  your  backyard.    Or,  when I tell you of the ghosts  that live inside my body;  When I tell you  I have a cemetery in my backyard  and in my front yard   and in my bedroom;   When I tell you   trauma is a steep slide   you cannot see the bottom of,   that my anxiety is a camera   that shows everyone I love as bones,  when I tell you   panic is a stubborn phantom,  she will grab hold of me  and not let go for months–  this is the part of the story   when everyone is telling you to run.    To love me  is to love a haunted house–  it’s fun to visit once a year,   but no one wants to live there,  and when you say,  “Tell me about the bad days,”  it sounds like all the neighborhood kids daring each other to ring the doorbell,   you love me  like the family walking through Horrorland holding hands–  You are not stupid,  or careless,   or even brave,  you’ve just never seen   the close-up of a haunting.    Darling,  this love will not cure me.   And this love will not scrape   the blood from the baseboards,  but it will turn all the lights on,  it will bring basil  back from the farmer’s market  and it will plant it in every windowsill,  it is the kind of love   that gives me goosebumps,  when you say to the ghosts,  “If you’re staying,   then you better make room,”  and we kiss against the walls   that tonight are not shaking,  so we turn the music up  and we dance to Miles Davis,  and you say,   “My god,  this house.  The way that it stands  even on the months   that no one goes into  or comes out of it.”    How reckless, the way that I love  like the first chapter of a ghost story.  Like the gentlest hand  reaching out of a grave.