the perils of lepidoptery

Divinum est sedare dolorem.~It is divine to abolish pain.

I read this in one of the many migraine books I have skimmed, blind-eyed and head throbbing.


For the winged creature, the perils of lepidoptery

Like a live butterfly pinned through the thorax to a board

an expansive sheet of white paper, stretching out as far as the many faceted eyes can see.

The butterfly looks alive—but it is no longer.

My pain has me pinned.


Rain. One white duck on a wet pond.

Coffee. The New York Times.

A garage full of crashing kittens. Contrary to what one might think, this is not the sound of happiness.

Head pain has had me in its brutal grip.
Sometimes it’s like I have a strange strangling sac around my brain.
Last night it felt like the whole inner core of my head was raw pulsing hamburger meat.
Today it is as if I will faint on my entire right side, and fall down a dark tunnel, but only after my right ear explodes, like an airbag in a traffic accident.

What good is my knowing so intimately about so much suffering?
I thought I knew this before.

All I knew between 3 and 4 am last night was that I was in severe pain and that I had to find someone somewhere to help me. I resolve to contact the head ache clinics at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and at Montefiori in the Bronx (my pet-sitter mentioned this place) and see who can or will see me and which I might more easily be able to drive to.

It feels like pressure has forced my skull into the shape of an egg.
I swear it, there is more of a peak on top today.
And in some ways I am drawn taut, like someone initiated a face lift,
Meaning they tried to lift my face from a height.

It remains suspended there.

Meanwhile, some inner magma is forcing the earth’s crust into a peak. Something is pushing out all my bones, making a fossil of me.

This is ridiculous. I am an organ donor, but I would like to continue to use my own organs for a while.

Perhaps it is a good time for Sara Teasdale’s All That was Mortal.

All that was mortal shall be burned away,
All that was mind shall have been put to sleep,
Only the spirit shall awake to say
What the deep says to the deep;
But for an instant for it too is fleeting—
As on a field with new snow everywhere,
Footprints of birds record a brief alighting
In flight begun and ended in the air.