Diary of a Hydrocephalic
Vanquish: The aspirin that promised to kill my headaches. It lied. Coffee went straight to my head.
Shunt #1: When they opened my brain, they found an ocean. I was drowning in its pulse.
Shunt #2: To counter failure, they needed a success greater than water in the ear of someone who can’t swim.
Love: This is where you come in, your goodness filling the exact shape of my wounds.
Injury: The hole in my spine winced as you juggled your sacrifices. “Reader, I married him,” I say.
Kintsugi: The body cracks; the ordinary splinters out of reach. We repair it with something more valuable than gold.
Brain Hernia: Should I brag about this? My brain’s too big for my skull.
Cancer#1: Would I miss one breast more than the other?
Cancer#2: Morning after surgery, I see you walk to the car from the window. Your back is to me, shoulders heaving.
This Fall Has a Name: Drop attack. You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.
Support System: We climbed the night’s scaffold and found some stars, just not the ones we were missing.
Convergence: The outside world collapsed inward. Why should you crawl into the black hole without me? Things could always be worse. Gravity could tear us apart.
.
Stink Eye Magazine 