An Unexplained Head Twitch

Someone is always watching:
from behind a
restaurant menu
or dark sunglasses
at a pool’s edge;
from a rack of discounted
clothes—from behind hands
to mouths that land
cheap punch lines:
Hey, I want to know
what makes you tic.

The aspersions are
blended potions
infused with glances:
kooky, loco, or screwy
mixed with nuts,
crackpot, or bananas.
Wacky, mental, or schizo
with fruitcake,
out to lunch, and
crazy as a loon.

A year ago, the bats
were loose in the belfry.
Last week, there was clarity
in the library when
“out of your mind”
made perfect sense,
given a moment’s thought.

Friends might ask how:
The source exotic,
pooling from behind
the flavum,
gaining momentum
in the trapezius,
and then assaulting
the cranium.
The urge unavoidable,
like a sneeze or
need for touch;
it’s a shrink-wrapped heart
trying to beat.

Family might ask when:
While lawn bowling on
a summer eve;
while sifting through memories
with trapdoors
during a winter fire;
while walking along
a craggy coastline
in spring;
as maple leaves crisp
and fall to streams
of why and who knows
where.

Doctors diagnose—
their version of a
new-moon cherry pick:
Tourette’s, dystonia, drug interactions,
tardive dyskinesia, anxiety, a tic,
sleep deprivation, PTSD from a
childhood trauma

unresolved, tucked tightly,
neatly away
in the hippocampus
like a baby green pea
in its local calaboose.

Eric Roller is an educator living in DeLand, Florida. His other poems can be read in The Chestnut Review and The South Dakota Review, as well as online in the journals Mothers Always Write, Atlas and Alice, and Rue Scribe. He also has a poem coming out in the Pinyon Review this summer.