post-concussion syndrome

i feel it all the time, stopped counting the months, instead counting the clouds at dawn for the nth time after the nth fractured night, stomach pinched up and hungry for metaphor, the words that won’t come like a river on the verge of freezing over, like a river on the verge of freezing over, like / like / like the eulogy i couldn’t write, the get-well-soon card, the casual hi-how-are-you hey I’m not so good actually, it follows me everywhere, vertiginous to this day, identity mistaken just beyond the mirror, sick-not-sick and back again to the ache above my eye, perpetually point-tender and gaudy and insolent, like here’s where the problem is, see?