The Headache that Walks Like a Man

The commute slides through my consciousness like setting concrete.

Sometimes I get the perspective reversed and it looks like the road is coming to a point somewhere in my skull. The dull ache between my eyes only serves to accentuate the feeling.

Suburban Detroit squeezes around the windshield and oozes by fuzzily like a warped 3rd generation videotape in fast forward.

Mornings like this can blunt a knife.

I try hard not to think about the day ahead, but bits of it leak through the gelid wall in my skull and my teeth begin involuntarily grinding together. What the fuck am I doing?

Traffic skates ahead of me drunkenly, a swarm of suicidal locusts. I squirt along the claustrophobic concrete artery like an anonymous cell through clots of human congestion. Eventually I spill into my accustomed parking spot (3rd floor, structure 1, the corner space between two support pylons--for defensive purposes).

I continue my involuntary trek to the office, refusing to focus on anything around me. Head swollen and brittle, I slither along the 6-inch rut worn in the concrete walk by an endless daily succession of my own footsteps.

The sky is stale, the sun beats out its stuffy murk of orange stickiness on my face. There is nothing new in the air today. Just habit.