Anyone who has lain awake rehearsing tomorrow's problems will recognise the relationship Teresa describes: constant, one-sided and hard to shake. Her poem turns worry into a man, "Worry the man who thinks he's so in love with me", and then follows the joke through to its logical end, a breakup. The central idea is that anxiety behaves like a clingy suitor, so the sensible response is to treat it like one: say no, and say it firmly, while knowing he will probably turn up again.
The opening image sets this up. Worry and the speaker are "going round and round / in a dance similar to a new couple's first trip around the dance floor." The dance suggests romance, but "round and round" also catches the looping quality of anxious thoughts. The charm wears off quickly. First dances do not last "for weeks on end", and the speaker is already "getting tired". Her vocabulary adds to the humour. A formal word like "unrequited" sits oddly in such a chatty voice, and "affair" normally implies something secret and mutual, when this is neither. Worry has no sense of when he is unwelcome, and "leave me the hell alone" makes him sound close to a stalker.
The poem's second move is a fantasy of infidelity. She wishes she could "cheat on Worry with the man I truly love", and the poem never names or describes this man. Judging by the lines that follow, he stands for the comfort and ease worry has crowded out, the "life I had before" when "happiness was priceless". In the version supplied, her spirit was "free to sore", presumably a slip for "soar". Even so, the word accidentally sets the earlier freedom against the present ache.
The strongest passage is built on repetition. "Worry doesn't complement me on how beautiful / I am" and "Worry doesn't wrap me in his arms at night" both list what a good partner would do, and each one swerves into "Instead". The compliment becomes a stomach tied "in knots for days". The reassuring embrace becomes lost sleep and "the pile of / stressors he leaves upon my shoulders each day". Here the metaphor turns physical. Worry is felt in the gut and carried on the shoulders, and the verbs "ties" and "leaves" make him a lover who gives only unwanted gifts. The line break after "pile of" even makes the reader wait for the weight to land.
The form matches the voice. The poem is one unbroken block with no stanzas, no regular rhythm and no planned rhyme, only chance echoes like "round and round" or "night" and "alright". The lines run to uneven lengths and spill over as if the speaker cannot stop talking, which suits a mind that cannot stop worrying. Several lines end on hinge words that leave the thought hanging: "but", "and", "Sounds a little desperate I know but". She hedges and half-apologises, as people do when they confess something embarrassing.
The turn comes with "That's it I'm calling it quits!" Until then Worry has been "he", someone she complains about to a listener. Now she addresses him directly as "you", as though he had walked into the room. The exclamation marks, doubled in "over!!", give her a burst of confidence, and the poem then does something braver than simply winning. "I know I'll see you again" admits that worry cannot be banished for good. What she asks for is a truce: "when you see me, please pretend / you don't know me." The request is funny, like the awkwardness of bumping into an ex, but the word "please" shows she cannot command him, only ask.
That honesty is what makes the poem worth reading. Giving anxiety a face, a pulse and a bad habit of showing up uninvited makes it something a reader can argue with. The humour is a way of coping, and the ending stays truthful about how little control she has. The speaker does not promise she is cured. She only insists that she is done being courted.