Crushed and Growing

A block’s in my head I can’t jar loose. I want it to go. I knock a hand against my skull, and it does no good. The hardness seems planted between my ears. I try to understand its cause, but my mind turns in spirals and flounders. Everything I see loses depth, my head hardening the whole time: trees stand minus shadows, people flatten into silhouettes. I feel caught in some bizarre trap and lash out for my protection. I take my head between my hands and squeeze in from the sides. My hands press with the callous firmness of a stranger, determined to break through the bone and meet. My skull resists, stonelike. The pressure in my head builds, bracing me. I press still but grow frightened. Will I not make it? I think. Will my head hold out? The blood and muscle in my face pulse, bulging in ripples. Then, the skull under my right hand crumples, then under my left. I am relieved. I plough my hands in eagerly. Blood bursts dark and hot through my fingers; my brain breaks into chunks. My eyes jolt from their sockets and roll like loose dials; I cry them away in long driblets of blood. A whimper escapes my lips that have jerked open, but I stifle the sound, glad to hear it die. My head caves inward; its broken contents sink and pool into my mouth.

I drop my hands to my side, exhausted. I stand there, as I had, able only to breathe through my nose’s remnants. I draw in air, let my lungs hold it a short moment, and breathe out; I give myself to this easy flow. After a long time, new eyes peer from the jumbled pulp my head has become. They are like grain seeds, that tiny you would not see them unless you knew they were there. I look with these dwarf eyes on the sunlit tree, the rain falling, the birds flying outside. I take it in without thinking, in a sort of rapture. Then my ears, dislodged from the sides of my head, go to listening. I hear wind blow and leaves rustle, the small stone strike and roll. I listen without a mind that knows or understands. However, I attend to the sounds I hear without tiring.

The right side of my sunken head grows now. A supple cheek rises, rounded on top by a knob of cheekbone. A dome of skin-clad skull lifts over this knob like a sail before the wind. My eyes widen. Meanwhile, I catch rhythms in the sights and sounds around me. I see the huge, overhanging sun rise, pass, and set. I hear the long, long trill of the robin give out in a sob. I store these rhythms in memory. Then, I can see the sun at night. I hear sweet birds in the silence.

My head gains shape and volume at a fresh lift of the skull. An eye socket, very round, and nasal bridge, jointed in the middle, form; my face, in looking outward, contours. This new head forming is lighter in structure than the old yet strongly framed. I touch the bones of the thin mandible and cheek and find they flex but never snap. I can press down the front of the broad, new forehead, but it rises back firmly when let alone. This head, I feel, is designed for fierce stresses, strong jolts, unsettlement. As its structure lifts, filling out, I become excited recognizing things more than simply taking them in through the senses. The sky clouds, and I know it might rain. I hear a friend’s voice and can anticipate her face around the corner. My newly fashioned memory is alive at every act of recognition; within the dome of my rounding cranium, it darts and flashes like the bees in a flower field. My mind sharpens, and I gain understanding.

Now my head slows in its growth as if soon it will be done forming. I admit its shape is imperfect, the top lumpy, the eyes strangely skewed. However, what I do inside my fresh minted pate matters more to me. I can see, hear, think, and know with this freedom I find strange and refreshing at once. I wonder about the open plain and crowded, busy plazas, the perspectives I can take on them. I am overwhelmed and delighted puzzling over the small tea leaves in my cup. I think I will make good on the potential this rough-born head of mine affords.