Headache - A Poem

I do not think about her all the time. 

That would be easier to excuse. 

What unsettles me is simply how she surfaces without warning, in the gaps between breath.

She is there in the pause before Morpheus leads me to sleep. 

She lingers in the moment after laughter has faded. 

She remains forever in the way my body leans forward, just slightly, when a voice in a crowd carries her rhythm.

There is nothing dramatic about the wanting. 

There is no grand suffering or turmoil. 

It is quieter than that. 

It is a throb and ache within my heart and a low pressure behind the eyes. 

She is a sense of misalignment, as if something essential had been set down somewhere and forgotten. 

Oh how I need her, but cannot explain such things for fear of loss and withdrawal.

I can function perfectly well, but I do so with a constant, unspoken awareness that life was happening one degree off true because of her absence. 

Is she something eternal or just a brain tumour?

I guess I will never know until I am dead.