It starts with drifting gravity, a tilt inside my head,
a softly rising whisper stirring thoughts of coming dread.
A coin dissolves across the back side of my tongue,
copper blooming bitter where no metal should have sung.
Then smoke without a fire curls quiet inside my head,
burnt toast in empty air with no appliance making bread.
A silver screaming siren ringing through my ears,
loud enough to drown the world I used to hear.
Spots scatter like fireflies and blur the room to gray,
the hallway bends and tunnels like a carnival midway.
The floor tilts over sideways, balance losing tread,
as static sweeps my brain from right to left in shocks that spread.
I wonder if a lightbulb feels this tremor before it goes—
a struggling little filament just moments from repose.
Then darkness folds the curtains and erases what I know,
the last thing that I witness is the absence of the glow.
They say my knees forget me and surrender to the floor,
my skull meets tile as thunder echoes through the core.
My body locks to timber stiff as winter-bitten trees,
then slackens just a moment — iron seizing in my knees.
My lungs clutch air like treasure hoarded away from me,
my eyes stay wide and distant where a conscious mind should be,
my pupils stretch and tighten like a telescope in fright,
searching empty galaxies behind extinguished sight.
My lips and fingers blue like winter biting at my skin,
my nerves ignite in rhythm like a storm that’s locked within,
one storm recedes to silence as another takes its place,
a tide of broken voltage every muscle has to take.
Again the rigid board, again the thunder’s crack,
again the lungs hold breath from me despite my begging back.
Minute after minute, my body fights the night,
until a needle stills the storm and switches off the light.
I wake like someone beaten by a marathon of war,
every joint remembering a pain I wasn’t there for.
Everything surrounding me feels fake but somehow real,
my memory like clips of film jumping through the reel.
I’m counted as a victory because I’m breathing still,
as if survival settles the next one coming ‘round the hill.
‘Cause stable’s just the silence where the thunder used to be,
a ticking timebomb waiting somewhere deep inside of me.
So I laugh a little softer and walk a little slow,
like something in my wiring could forget me and let go.
I live between the warnings that may never come again,
or might arrive tomorrow like a half-forgotten friend.
Mar 7
Mar 7, 2026 at 4:35 AM UTC
It starts with drifting gravity, a tilt inside my head,
a softly rising whisper stirring thoughts of coming dread.
A coin dissolves across the back side of my tongue,
copper blooming bitter where no metal should have sung.
Then smoke without a fire curls quiet inside my head,
burnt toast in empty air with no appliance making bread.
A silver screaming siren ringing through my ears,
loud enough to drown the world I used to hear.
Spots scatter like fireflies and blur the room to gray,
the hallway bends and tunnels like a carnival midway.
The floor tilts over sideways, balance losing tread,
as static sweeps my brain from right to left in shocks that spread.
I wonder if a lightbulb feels this tremor before it goes—
a struggling little filament just moments from repose.
Then darkness folds the curtains and erases what I know,
the last thing that I witness is the absence of the glow.
They say my knees forget me and surrender to the floor,
my skull meets tile as thunder echoes through the core.
My body locks to timber stiff as winter-bitten trees,
then slackens just a moment — iron seizing in my knees.
My lungs clutch air like treasure hoarded away from me,
my eyes stay wide and distant where a conscious mind should be,
my pupils stretch and tighten like a telescope in fright,
searching empty galaxies behind extinguished sight.
My lips and fingers blue like winter biting at my skin,
my nerves ignite in rhythm like a storm that’s locked within,
one storm recedes to silence as another takes its place,
a tide of broken voltage every muscle has to take.
Again the rigid board, again the thunder’s crack,
again the lungs hold breath from me despite my begging back.
Minute after minute, my body fights the night,
until a needle stills the storm and switches off the light.
I wake like someone beaten by a marathon of war,
every joint remembering a pain I wasn’t there for.
Everything surrounding me feels fake but somehow real,
my memory like clips of film jumping through the reel.
I’m counted as a victory because I’m breathing still,
as if survival settles the next one coming ‘round the hill.
‘Cause stable’s just the silence where the thunder used to be,
a ticking timebomb waiting somewhere deep inside of me.
So I laugh a little softer and walk a little slow,
like something in my wiring could forget me and let go.
I live between the warnings that may never come again,
or might arrive tomorrow like a half-forgotten friend.
This poem moves through the progression of a prolonged seizure: the warning aura, the tonic-clonic storm, and the disorienting return to consciousness afterward. It also shows the reality that while the seizures may end, the condition itself does not. For those living with epilepsy, relief is temporary, a pause between episodes that will come again with little to no warning.
