Migraine

Holly Allen

Here is a head.
It’s not the kind of head you can cut
with some plastic sham-of-a knife,
thinning out ribbons of lettuce that crackle like aluminum sheets,
yearning, pouting for some crushing touch
to put the water out.

It’s not the kind of head you can get
for twenty or fifty or more dollars,
blundering bills nervously fingered through the sheet-like shadows
to some embarrassed end in a grocery store parking lot-
some asphalt for a bed.

It’s the kind of head that’s broken.
Not a lump-covered hill of white nor the porcelain-screech
of one sorry cracked skull,
but the pressured thoughts of too-bold blood raging,
an illusion of lights, an amplified mess of sounds,
a thunder clap of emptiness.

Here is a head
that my mother once had said
was like a great chest for filling
with antiquarian treasures, aged scrolls, and happy secrets.
Like a whisper wants to be a roaring declaration,
I want to fill it to the brim,
I want those over-eager twelve-year-old hands again-
pawing pale and overpacking for a weekend trip,
hungry mongoose eyes aiming
for every date, every name, every crooked smile
left in life’s little gutters.

But
here is a head that is broken.
It cannot be cut but by its own hand,
some blade of air cleaving through open ends.
It cannot be bought but by its own time-
here’s ten minutes gone
ten hours
ten days
of hanging over the bleach-bone toilet in agony
praying for some memory
of peace.

Holly Eva Allen is a writer currently living in California. She has a degree in linguistics and English from the University of California. Her work has been previously published in magazines such as Levee Magazine, Blue Unicorn, and The Slanted House.