When the Disease Is Winning

It’s a “well” day. Sunny. 70. Perfect
for you. No migraine attack in sight. Yet
what to do? Whom to see when you
finally, today, can see someone?
After a decade, your friends have new
lives. And you are not on their schedule,
as you aren’t a reliable scheduler.
And where can you go anyway,
now that it’s Saturday
and the new world loves fragrance
more than you? The restaurants are full
of the perfumed. The busy parks
have scent wearers. (Who worries
about bees?!) The galleries have weekend
frequenters headed out to dine after-
wards. Festival? Forget about it!
Your list is divvying down. Think positive!
But over your head, migraine is looking
at you and laughing. It’s got you.
And you know it. Just when you think
you’ve triumphed a little, it
let’s you know it’s not so. For it’s lurking
like a thief. No, it is a thief. It has days,
no, years in its pockets bulging, and you see
them. It has taken the people you love and
sent them off to a private island with a moat
and crocodiles. The drawbridge is up.
And they don’t have a phone. Besides,
you’re looking like someone they don’t
even know. You’re so alone you’re tempted
to let migraine back in. But you know how
foolish that is. So routine, which you wanted
to break, lures you. And the day slides
back like a string on a yo-yo you stopped
playing with. You stay inside your house,
but the scents drift in with wafts
of dryer sheets. You might as well be cleaning.
Your spouse has gone off to busy himself.
And it seems that special days are quite ordinary.
You should be thankful for that. Days in the past
were so dreadful even the devil thought
that you were tortured enough. Now
you are blessed with the day at hand.
But you’ve forgotten how to live, how
to pick up without the beast at the end
of a ball and chain, wiggling and squirming
and calling you bad names and reminding you
of all of the things that you were too sick
to do. You have a choice, but it’s not appealing.
You could leave, just go out. But you know
that when you get back, the migraine beast
will likely be waiting for you and probably
won’t be too happy at best.

When I Missed My 88-Year-Old Mother’s Birthday

I shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have gone
to look at that used car on the lot where deodorizers
curled through the air like a snake unfurling to strike.
I should have stayed at home, safe from the myriad

of smells the world loves so much. I should have
remembered . . . Don’t they scent the air somehow?
But, no, I strode out on the warm 70-degree day
with the light breeze, because it was perfect

and I’d been inside for seven days. Because
the day called me like a siren on an island, and I
gave in, because traveling is full of promise,
and what could promise more than an American

car all shined up, with the smiling sales guy
and his gleaming teeth? I should have thought
harder, should have guessed the consequences
of being taken in by lures of sweet talk and good

gas mileage with a sun roof. But, hey, I loved it.
I loved spring being so wistful / wishful, the day
in my pocket, burning a hole in there like money
I didn’t have, like time I’d lost, like days I’d lose

once again by ignoring my triggers more than
I should have. So I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry
I was silly to think it would have worked out.
That yesterday I would have wrapped your gifts

instead of unwrapping an antiemetic, instead
of popping off the cap to the ibuprofen. I
always was a fool, head in the clouds,
the roads dropping beneath me as I rolled

over them in the country, with the windows down,
to the barns of Bucks County and Harbourton,
where racehorses lingered, swishing their tails
in the pasture, grazing the sunlight on lush grass.

Donna J. Gelagotis Lee is the author of two award-winning collections, Intersection on Neptune (The Poetry Press of Press Americana, 2019), winner of the Prize Americana for Poetry 2018, and On the Altar of Greece (Gival Press, 2006), winner of the 2005 Gival Press Poetry Award and recipient of a 2007 Eric Hoffer Book Award: Notable for Art Category. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies and journals internationally, including Lifelines, The Massachusetts Review, Medical Literary Messenger, Please See Me, Still You: Poems of Illness and Healing (Wolf Ridge Press, 2020), and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her website is www.donnajgelagotislee.com.