MEDITATION ON A BRAIN BLEED

Head pounding.
Zofran and morphine leaking into my veins.

I am curled in the fetal position as a small-boned, soft-spoken, would-be physician, under vigilant supervision, slides a long, thin needle into my lower back. I smile:

Suddenly.

Through what violently interrupted my sleep at 4:00 this morning and has intensified with each passing hour.

At the cosmic amusement of the woman with the needle sharing the name (variant spelling and all) of another, who pierced me from behind (albeit metaphorically and, perhaps, while sleepwalking and, as memory serves, higher up, until it seemed the weapon was poking through my chest).

And in conjuring the sister-friend, who recently spoke of not relinquishing power—certainly not to something as undeserving and ultimately meaningless as a name. Reconfigure. "Reassign," she said. I think. Reimagine? Until the only thing present, should that name be encountered (as, doubtlessly, it will be), is LOVE. Remember the holder of the name as her highest self. Remember you as whole.

"Ah," I discern. "This time, it's meant for healing." (But both times it was, darling. This much is increasingly incontestable.)

Cerebrospinal fluid is being collected because a man, whose job it is to know such things, believes my brain is bleeding and he—we—must know for sure, and here I lie, reassessing names and needles and fluid and the implications of having been opened up (exposed) while coiled like an infant (a land snail shell, a spare microphone cable), and freezing and in the scrutiny of strangers and possibly hemorrhaging.

The woman with the needle and familiar name says, "You'll feel pressure. You shouldn't feel pain." And I hear music. Beneath her words. Bouncing off my vertebral column. I close my eyes.

Soon afterward will come a second tiny hole. This one drilled into my skull. My normally vivid dream life will turn even more so. I'll see clearly when I sleep; I won't be able to see six inches in front of me when awake. (Someone will sympathize: "This will pass quickly enough.") What I hear best will arrive on breakers of silence: metaphors apropos to vision and fever dreams and mapping and numbness. In those instants, I'll visualize a stream of unnecessariness surging from tiny holes and freeing me. Stuff running off my back and out of my head.
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Moore, Patsy. "Meditation on a Brain Bleed." The Way Home: Poems/Essays. Los Angeles: ScrawlHaus, 2014/2017. Print.