Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Migraine Suite

2023; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 56; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5406/15549399.56.2.20

1554-9631

Darlene Young,

Migraine and Headache Studies

Prelude Something is not right. A haunting quaver to the world. Your mind feels viscous, your body watery. The lights have dimmed. The sense of the smell of ozone.AllemandeA greasy fingerprint on the lower right of the screen of the world becomes a tiny crescent of jazzy spangles, expanding, growing toward you like the titles on a superhero movie. A takeover is in progress. You discover you cannot see faces or sentences in entirety. Focus on a single eye, a mouth. When mouths speak, you cannot recognize the words. When you speak, the wordsshirk and cavort. You are driftingout to sea.CouranteThe neon scythe- shaped sparklers become the burr of a dental drill, dull-saw shriek on hardwood,all that is jagged, splintered, pluck- tangled, zipper- snagged. Snarledsteel wool claxon, burnt skillet egg-ash, earwigs, asterisks. Sand in the eyes, a broken tooth, scraped frost, roadkill. You watchthis dizzy dance behind closed eyes, limp, an over-full dull pail of bolts.SarabandeTime, soggy paper,thins into nothing. You driftin a forever, existing everywhereand nowhere, like God. You are still here. You are still here. You are stillhere. You realize the brouhaha is quieting, slightly. And slightly.As the tide ebbs, you find yourself standing in nausealike rank seaweed. Your middle expands to fill the universe,scummy and foamed. Not a churning but a slow rot. Time is. Is time. Is stagnant.GigueRetroflux.The air is clearbut wobbly. You slink,haggard and flimsy, poketentatively the corners of your mind—is it over? Are all the termitesdead? You cannot yet laugh,but sit on the porch, rocking,smiling faintly, like Grandma.You might decideto live.