1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below the poem

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

What Is Eating You

Under duress, it may feel 
as if a worm is eating you inside. 
It is natural to think it is vile 
and try to get rid of it. 

But it is actually beauty 
eating your worries 
in order to fatten itself up. 

When the time is right, 
it spins itself into a cocoon 
and then emerges, spreading 
its colored wings before your eyes. 

You will wonder how 
something so tiny 
can peel the winter 
from the ground 
and make way 
for spring blossoms. 

If you let that wonder 
live in your own tiny frame, 
you will feel the power 
of all the seasons in you. 

And the next time 
you feel the gnashing 
and gnawing inside, 
you will bless it as
a ground breaking.

Please join Writing From The Inside Out by attending the read-around sessions on Friday afternoons. It’s free, fun, a great way to share, and reading a poem is optional. If you have not registered, click the button below; and if you have registered, you do not need to register again, simply use the link sent to you in your confirmation email. Register Here:


Next Read Around is April 22, 2022

My Thoughts

We ask, “What’s eating you?” when someone seems consumed with worry or fear. I used to joke that my mother mastered worry so thoroughly that she would especially worry if she didn’t have anything to worry about. Worry can take on an obsessive quality, and persists even when we know we are running ourselves ragged trying to solve imagined problems that may not even exist. Worry, like any other negative pattern, or negative emotion, has its hidden gifts. The first, and most obvious, is that we wouldn’t worry if we didn’t care. Worry is a concern that something or someone important to us is at risk. It reminds us of something precious, something we want to preserve or protect. The gnashing and gnawing of worry usually arises out of an urgency to act, a drive to do something about the situation. This can help us to discern what we might do, but worry usually spins out of control around negatively imagined “what if” scenarios that may not ever come about and for which there is no current solution and no approprate action to take. The poem, What Is Eating You, flips the consuming nature of worry on its head, suggesting that the worry is food for the preciousness at its core to birth itself into your awareness.

What Is Eating You is included in my upcoming book of poetry, Everythig Is Shouting Wake Up scheduled for relase in June 2022.

You can also hear a udio recital of this poem here:

Prompt Menu

  1. What do you worry about? Journal or write a poem about a worry and how it eats away at you.

  2. Write a list of past worries, things that you once worried about, especially ones that never came about.

  3. Journal or write a poem that explores the gift of worry in general or the preciousness at the core of a specific worry. You could write an “ode to worry” or use the stem sentence prompt: The gift of worry is…

  4. Personify worry and describe his or her upbringing and life experiences. What might have led worry to fear the world or spin out imagined dangers.

  5. Journal or write about any recurring thought or emotion that spins around insinde of you and imagine it is spinning a cocoon to transform into something new. What was it, how is it transforming, and what might it become.

  6. Pick something tiny (a lady bug on a rose petal, a drop of oil into a pan;) and journal or write about how that tiny thing can have a transformative effect.

  7. Journal or write a poem using the stem sentence: I felt all the seasons in me when…

  8. As usual, write about whatever else inspires you from the poem or from life.