A poem, by me, about my temporal lobe epilepsy. <3

PAGAN_MECHANIST 

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>Boot

 

A flicker...

 

left side first, always the left...

 

as if something inside me forgets the map of my own body...

 

My arm loosens from me.

 

My leg drifts.

 

Gravity negotiates.

 

Reality doesn’t break.

 

It repeats.

 

>Déjà vu, again, again, again...

 

like a needle stuck in the same second scratching time into a wound.

 

A whisper rises from nowhere.....and everywhere at once...

 

>something is wrong

 

Yes....I know....

 

>Temporal lobe

 

a quiet room where memory should live fills with static.

 

Names blur at the edges.

 

Moments fold in on themselves.

 

Somewhere between AM and PM I lose the thread of the day...

 

and it does not come back...

 

>Sound leaves first.

 

The world goes mute on one side.

 

>a sudden absence...

 

like a door closing inside my skull.

 

>Then comes the ringing...

 

high, electric

 

a thin scream stretched into eternity.

 

My body becomes a wire stripped of its insulation.

 

Pain hums down my spine,

 

branches into my legs,

 

sets fire beneath the skin.

 

>I walk like something unfinished...

 

a stagger, a tilt,

 

a man learning gravity again

 

one step too late.

 

>There is a moment

 

a narrow place,

 

between presence and absence,

 

where I stand

 

>not alive

 

>not gone

 

>just waiting

 

for the system to decide.

 

Then...

 

everything ends at once.

 

>No warning.

 

>No mercy.

 

The ground rises.

 

The body drops.

 

The world cuts to black like a power failure no one prepared for.

 

When I return I am not whole.

 

My face is unfamiliar.

 

>My muscles ache like they fought a war I was not awake to witness....

 

Pain arrives fully formed as if it had been waiting

just outside the door.

 

Thought slows.

 

Words hide.

 

Language fractures into pieces I cannot always gather.

 

I reach for a sentence....

 

>error...error...404...no words found

 

and come back empty-handed.

 

Meanwhile, the body keeps its own ledger...

 

a dry mouth that never ends,

 

a throat that tightens,

 

organs that misfire in quiet humiliations.

 

Everything leaks,

 

everything strains,

 

everything forgets how to behave.

 

>Light becomes an enemy.

 

>Flashes...

 

>brief, harmless to others...

 

turns my brain into a storm.

 

Fuzz dances at the edges.

 

>Signals collide.

 

Something inside me begins to slip.

 

>Sleep is not safe.

 

Sometimes the body jerks like it is trying to escape itself...

 

a sudden pull,

 

knees to chest,

 

a reflex that feels like falling without ever leaving the bed.

 

And still...

I wake.

 

>Again.Again.Again.....

 

Like a thing that refuses deletion.

 

Like a cat that has outlived its own count and no longer keeps track.

 

People ask how I am.

 

>I tell them.....I am alive.

 

It is not an answer.

 

It is a status report.

 

Because I exist in the flicker...

 

between signal and silence,

 

between breath and absence,

 

between the moment I am here

 

and the moment I am not.

 

My brain misfires.

 

Reality distorts.

 

And yet...

 

something in me keeps choosing to come back online.