I get migraines, debilitating migraines that put me entirely out...

I get migraines, debilitating migraines that put me entirely out of commission for days at a time.  I lay in bed, unable to sleep, and the pain is so much I honestly feel like I’m going to lose my mind.  All I do is think, of everything all at once, which makes the pain worse, but it shows me in such intense clarity what I am made of.  I am proud of what I can endure, what I can rise from.  I know this.

Typewriter Series #3051 as read by me, Tyler Knott Gregson

I know pain as a cleansing thing,
mineral spirit and cloth
to the varnish we swore we were.
Strips to bare bone and sinew,
shines like X-ray, illuminates
the pulp of what keeps us
shouting.

I know hours that spill into days,
quicksilver to stone and I know eyes
that cannot close.  I know sleep
a feathers width from reach, from grasp,
I know what it is to Call out
for darkness for death if it brings
something that sings as sweetly
as peace.

We lie and name ourselves mighty,
but are we not porcelain,
are we not the most fragile
of all things mortal?

In some cocoon of misery, forty some
hours since the genesis of this ache,
I name myself bravery manifest
for still fighting.  

I am cleansed, purified by
this suffering, I will emerge
like man from marble, dusted
clean and shining under some
oculus.  When this ebbs, I will rise,
newborn and weeping.

-Tyler Knott Gregson-