Last Meal

They troop in
from miles around,
I swear,
to these little
hole-in-the-wall diners,
eating like there's
no tomorrow.
File in, then file out.
Amazing how they return time after time,
the menus are so limited.
But they do. Can't get enough.

They walk by a huge billboard
on their way to dinner;
a bright orange background
with giant black letters:
TERRO ANT KILLER
and an enormous picture
of a dead ant.

Some of them look the
other way when they pass it,
but even so, how can they
possibly fail to notice,
in the center of each
paper covered table,
a huge, circular message,
maginified even further
by the crystal dome
of poisoned nectar
covering it:
Place TERRO here.

Mary Ellen Seidel

Migraine

Day 1: I wake up with a sinus-y band of tightness around my eyes. This is a sort of low-grade headache I get fairly often, and is usually curable with a couple hours of sleep in a dark, quiet room. I sometimes skip the cure, and go into the office anyway. Occasionally this works out fine, but more often it backfires and I wind up with a raging migraine. I get up, planning to go into the office, but before I'm finished eating, the dark throbbing around my eyes is enough to send me back to bed. I'm in bed all day, although I get up around 5:00pm and have a bowl of soup. I'm not really very hungry, and the soup has little taste. Those are some of the first signs of a migraine, for me.

The headache is consistent all day, a strap of pressure, circled around my skull, in a width from the top of my head to my upper cheek bones. By 8:00pm I am restless, trying to find a position that is the least painful for my head. I am hot and cold, by turns. Kicking off blankets, then pulling them up over me again. The curtains in the room are drawn, but are luminescently white from the moon and the streetlights outside. The whiteness is painful to my eyes, even when they're closed, and I block the window from my view with a pillow laid on it's side. The headache is relentless, a dull pounding, ceaseless and mind numbing, against which I have absolutely no control. I sleep fitfully, through the night, always with the thought at the edge of my mind... please let it be gone away by morning...

Day 2: Worse. The headache is more intense, shifting, painful; at times a thudding ache, suddenly changing to a piercing pain in the upper right part of my head and brain, then just as quickly morphing into a dull whack of pain across the eyes. Every thought hurts. In fact, thinking is slowed to a crawl: like I'm underwater, slogging. I basically try not to think at all. The headache is like a tornado wrapped around my head, face, skull, brain; constantly moving, a black creature.

I should add here that I am poly-modal synesthetic: I see words and numbers in color, all the time; as well as various other slightly different interpretations of thought processes. It's not terribly important, in this piece of writing, (or anywhere else, for that matter), except to say, when I see the creature as black, it is. Also in varying shades of greys, and moving textures. However, I'm not at all sure that other migraine sufferers don't see the headache in colors too, so I'm not sure the synesthesia is even worth mentioning. Take it as you will.

I sleep. Constantly. I twist and turn to find a position on a pillow, off a pillow, on a folded corner of a blanket, anywhere there is the slightest temporary respite from pain. If there is some solace on the exhale breath, I exhale as long as I can, before inhaling again. My body and brain go into a sort of altered state, a slowing. So I sleep, a white sleep, with suddenly crazy dreams, shocking circuses of color and riotous theatrical performances, vignettes of stress; at the end of each mini dream I am stressed and shouting, and wake with a jolt, head pounding ferociously.

I know I will need sustenance, and I softly, systematically, plan how I will achieve it, in my deliberately slow, submerged state of thinking. Each thought is carefully chosen, nothing too intense, tiptoeing around my own brain, so as not to disturb the black tempest any further. I contemplate what I have in the kitchen, what I may be successful at keeping down, what will not be too difficult to get. I know I will have to get up, out of bed, and slowly make my way downstairs to the kitchen. I can't hold my head upright, the pounding is too intense. I know if I choose to get some orange juice, I will have to raise my head up, twice. Once to get the juice from the top shelf of the refrigerator, and another time to get a glass from the cupboard. I know that pulling the cupboard door open will be a jolting experience. Orange juice is one of the few things I can conjure up enough interest in, to actually put all that planning into motion. Every movement creates a new wave of aching in my head. I hang onto the banister on the way down to the kitchen. One...step...at...a...time. I get the juice, very slowly. I take a yogurt from the fridge while I have the door open. I open the silverware drawer. Every creak from the drawer, every clang from the silverware is painfully magnified, echoing in a burst of blackening fireworks across my brain. Once back upstairs I lay down and lick tiny, tiny bites of yogurt from the spoon. Altogether I eat a couple tablespoons of yogurt. Quite a bit, actually. A minuscule sip or two of the orange juice is all I can manage. I sleep.

I wake. Head pounding, now nauseous too. I hope I won't vomit, because that's a fairly severe stage of migraine for me, and I know I will take longer to recover from it. No such luck - I'm going to vomit. I make it into the upstairs bathroom, drop a towel from the rack onto the cold tile floor to kneel on and heave out the contents of my stomach. There is a few minutes of grace after I vomit, where I feel somewhat better. I know it won't last. I get up, inch my way downstairs to the first floor, through the kitchen, down the basement stairs to the basement refrigerator where I know there is some 7-Up. This seems like a more comforting drink than the acidic orange juice I just threw up. Maybe because we were always given 7-Up when we were growing up and were sick. I get a clean glass from the cupboard, requiring another lift of the head; shuddering pain. I make it back upstairs, where I open the 7-Up in the darkness of the room. The 'sklitch' sound as I open the can is expected, I'm braced for it, and can clearly hear a drop of soda ping outward and land on the wall or floor beside my bed. I wonder, inanely, whether soda always sprays that far when opened, and also whether I will ever remember to clean it off.

I vomit two more times this day, the second time inhaling some, making my airway spasm closed. This has happened before, and although the initial reaction is panic, I force myself to relax, till I can breathe again. As I gasp for air, I see myself in the bathroom mirror. In a strange way, it's calming; almost like there's someone there with me. I live alone, and it occurs to me that I could easily die alone.

I feel I could keep some ice cream down, and I remember there are Buster Bars in the freezer. During the grace period after the third round of vomiting, I go downstairs, put one in a bowl and bring it up. I've forgotten to bring a fork or spoon, so I take a teeny nibble off the end. The room is dark, I'm lying on my side, with my head on a pillow - my taste buds are shot, but I think I just ate a peanut. I pray I won't throw up again, because I know a peanut won't be as pleasing coming up, as say, a few sips of 7-Up. I (more carefully) pry the chocolate/peanut/fudge end off and let it fall into the bowl. I do all this while laying down in the least uncomfortable position I can find, trying to think about nothing but the coolness of the food. The white ice milk is soothing and I eat maybe a half cup of it. I feel good that I'd made the effort to grab the plastic lid to the bowl also, so now that I've eaten what I can, I'm able to set the cover over the whole leftover mess, and not have to think about my kitty getting into it while I'm asleep. Which I am. On and off, all day. And all night. There is no room for rational thought, other than surviving the migraine. No room for inventive, creative, or any other kind of productive thinking. There is no tv. There is no computer. Although the occasional thought flits through that I'd like to check my email, I don't have the strength to open my laptop, and the light from the computer screen would send my eyes and brain into compounding explosions of horror. I sleep much the same as the previous night, except now in addition to the black spidery migraine, there is also another, more physical pain, where there is no place I can really lay my head down without it aching, pounding. This is also one of the more severe stages of a migraine for me. It feels as if the bones in my head, my skull, have been battered and bruised.

Day 3: Same. I pray for escape. At one point, someone outside, a neighbor, starts up a huge power sander or enormous wet vac or something evil and loud. It's almost more than I can take. I have heard it on previous days, and today I dream of slicing off the cord in secret and leaving the knife there beside it, just so the dolt will know someone was pissed. Doesn't this cacophony bother any of the other neighbors? Please, someone go tell this idiot it's too freaking loud. I utter a prayer in despair: please Lord, make him stop. The noise ceases instantly.

I have not thrown up since vomit #3, the previous day. Although the headache is still unrelenting, I know that is a good sign. I sleep. I wonder how a person can sleep this much. I sleep some more.

Around 6:00pm I am able to get up. I am hungry, a good sign. I'm dying for a hot bubble bath. And I'm exhausted; the meal prep will have to be something easy. I find some microwavable soup, a chicken noodle one that does not make my stomach lurch when I look at the picture on the label. I can barely open the simple snap-off lid, and I make certain to do it over the kitchen waste container in case I spill. I know there is no way I can clean anything off the floor. I heat it up, run a hot tub, pour in some bubble bath that has a light pleasant scent that will not make me nauseous. I take the heated soup right into the bathroom, and eat it while soaking in the tub. I sip the broth from a spoon: it is amazing, one of the most delicious meals I have ever eaten. I'm starting to feel human again.

I make a point of not talking too much about my migraines, and I've never written about them before. I thought I would write this and never want to read it again, my feeling being I have already lost so many days in my life to migraines that when I'm feeling great, I have no desire to waste any more time thinking about one. However, as I reread this, I surprise myself by how strong I actually am, when up against this dark and bitter enemy of mine.

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger." Nietzsche
Lord, I can only hope so.

At The Lake Pantoum

The little ones play in the shallows,
colored buckets filled with sand and shells,
splashing, summer shrieks and giggles.
The adults by the shoreline, all eyes lakeward.

Colored buckets filled with sand and shells,
pouring, patting, forming castles on the beach.
The adults by the shoreline, all eyes lakeward.
Empty canoe floats near the reeds across the bay.

Pouring, patting, forming castles on the beach
in this eden of their childhood summer.
Empty canoe floats near the reeds across the bay.
It's Sanders, I heard. They're looking for him now.

In this eden of their childhood summer,
all lake, and loons, and campfires, unaware.
It's Sanders, I heard. They're looking for him now.
Flashing lights of sheriff's car, a clutch of fear.

All lake, and loons, and campfires, unaware,
tonight they will dance with fireflies.
Flashing lights of sheriff's car, a clutch of fear.
A mourning rain sweeps across the water.

Tonight they will dance with fireflies,
splashing, summer shrieks and giggles.
A mourning rain sweeps across the water.
The little ones play in the shallows.

Mary Ellen Seidel
5/6/2002

The table knife is papa,
tall and serrated for the dangerous
job of cutting.
Mama fork twirls
her shiny-tined skirt
in do-si-dos through
the mashed potatoes
on the girl's plate.
Salad fork daughter keeps an eye
on baby spoon, round in infancy.

Well, the woman says,
you certainly are a quiet one.
The man clears his throat
and drinks wine, deep red.

The girl rolls her silverware
inside a linen napkin,
stacked together;
fathermotherdaughterbaby.

The man and woman exchange
a glance, while the girl, seated
on a velvet cushioned chair, legs
dangling, spells out a word
under the table,
over and over
with her patent leathered foot:
FAMILYFAMILYFAMILY

Mary Ellen Seidel
5/15/2002

You, who touch the wounds we hide,
with healing hands
and try to guide
the sorrows of our souls and minds.

You, who look beneath the bright
and laughing of our lives,
you might
endeavor to untie the binds.

You, who work with gentle touch
of hand or spoken word,
are trusted much
to lead us through a path that winds

along some other road, less known.
To take us back into the light,
to make us whole, to find our own,
intact, to wellness of all kinds.

You, who see beyond the gaze,
the fragileness behind our ways,
are truly blessed.
There is no way we can repay
for all the lives you've touched.
And saved.

Mary Ellen Seidel
8/30/2001

From Annie Proulx's book, Close Range, Wyoming Stories: A Lonely Coast:
"Josanna Skiles cooked at the Wig-Wag. She had two women friends, Palma Gratt and Ruth Wolf, both of them burning at a slower rate than Josanna, but in their own desperate ways also disintegrating into drifts of ash."
"They thought they were living then, drank, smoked, shouted to friends, and they didn't so much dance as straddle a man's thigh and lean in."
"There were times when I thought the Buckle was the best place in the world, but it could shift on you and then the whole dump seemed like a mess of twist-face losers, the women with eyebrows like crowbars, the men covered with bristly red hair, knuckles the size of new potatoes, showing the gene pool was small and the rivulets that once fed it had dried up. I think sometimes it hit Josanna that way too because one night she sat quiet and slumped at the bar watching the door, watching for Elk, and he didn't come in."
"This's a miserable place," she said. "My god it's miserable."

I've been immersed in Annie Proulx for a while. I'm staggered by her sharp writing. So much ragged raw life in so few pages. It's a tic on the depressing side for February reading in Minny, but it draws you in, deep.

I was the first, and perhaps only, one in our large Catholic family to get divorced. It was hard to break the news to my folks and family. Even harder, in many ways, to break it to my friends. Couples my soon-to-be-ex and I had known for so many years, and were close with, vacationed together, dinnered and drank, watched families grow, and parents pass; followed through life. I felt the stunned reactions like a wave of hard hurt. There is an anxiety before the telling, steeling yourself for the reaction, hoping you won't fall apart and dissolve into a heap of rumpled flesh, your bones all gone to mush from sadness, stress, and the panic that comes from starting down an unfamiliar dark road you never suspected you'd be on.

It took a lot out of me to tell my girl friends. Mostly I emailed. The letters I sent were brief, but heartfelt, and I needed the distance, couldn't trust my voice to carry me through on the phone. I cried, in private, when I read the responses.

Two of my closest girlfriends came and gathered me up, took me to dinner. It was a needed thing. We went to a Mexican place, back when the food was still good there. The topic hung in the air like a rotten corpse while we chatted about nothing. I braced for it, and when we'd cleared an obvious place in the conversation, like an empty stage for the story, I spoke, the briefest of conversations, the heaviest of words. It seems like I'm describing a death here, and it was. The passing of 25 years of a marriage and all the life and living that goes with it; done, dead, and buried six feet deep. With nothing to take it's place. With everything to take it's place.

My girlfriends had brought gifts: wine and bubble bath, essentials. One of them handed me a small bag in which something rattled. A knife, fork and spoon. From the Goodwill store. The dam burst; we laughed, about a lot of things. We cried. We talked a little trash.

I've done all right going down that new road. It's only dark at night, when it should be. It's familiar now, and comfortable. I kept the silverware. It reminds me of the many women in my life who have heart. And who know you will be okay after all, and know enough to say it with wine and bubble bath and a few pieces of old tableware, with no need for words.

Vornox

I'm not from here,
he tells the kids at his new school,
letting them think about it.

Nearly a year older,
he is the only boy there
who can leap over the sandbox
in a single bound.
Wins every race,
is bigger and stronger
than anyone else in
their small world.

He shows them odd-shaped stones
from his pocket, I get my powers from these.
Hands in his homework
written in strange squiggly symbols.
Reads his book report aloud
in a new language.
Miss Davis sighs,
Vernon, see me after school please.
He extends his arms upward in a V-shape.
My name is Vornox.
When school resumes in the fall
he is not there.

Mary Ellen Seidel
5/15/2002