Head Pressure

JN Nucifera

Frontal:                                                        We face forwards.      It is all we can do. But the future
is frightening,   so much to do, so little time.

At this age, I should have done so much that I've not yet done:
first dates,             first loss,               first failures,
first kisses,    first joy,                    first successes,                    first invention,
first love,           first discoveries,            first reinvention.

 The list grows the more dawns I try to see in my mind,
but my body isn't moving.               My face is paralyzed in place,         ,
freezing my gaze eastward to see each rising sun heat the air,
pressure building until    my    head    hurts.                                                    .

Sphenoid:                    It takes decades for a tree to grow, to feel the wind
slow through its branches as it absorbs the now,
to feel the noontime sun build a life. It wedges itself
into the skyline, shading me from the dawn, blocking the updrafts.

It takes decades for a tree to grow, but only a moment for it to fall,
shattering into shrapnel, sending splintering cracks through
my overcoat of frost, falling off in spoonfuls of worry.

Ethmoid:         The river tries to pull these pieces from its belly, but they
keep lifting and dragging. The smallest splinters linger until
the mouth; the heaviest are left at the source. Now long dry,
the river's cries echo in the stones left behind.

Why do my smallest worries flow so easily from my mouth?

Water flows down,        but how does wind know          the direction to breeze?
How do priorities…?      Shall I throw my snows to the wind,        let it   flutter
in the afternoon easterlies    and check them off as they       fall to earth?

Maxillary:
A curveball's sideways  spiral  causes the  wind   to      move         faster
on one side than the other.  When you  push me   through      still         air,
the breeze lifts out of  my   body,   floating      alongside         me.

Maybe it’s you alongside me. When you push me through   still     air
into the sunset, I can see the frost of my   breath     escaping.
Everything flows out, leaves   of worry     in boughs.

A curveball's sideways spiral causes the pressures to differ
on each side, pushing air from slow to go. If I stand frozen
staring east long enough, I can see decades of absorbing the now,
leaving heaviness behind. You wedge my way into the night.

The Science

In physics, ‘head pressure’ is a measurement that helps predict how a gas or liquid will behave. In everyday use, ‘head pressure’ is the feeling of something pushing on your skull, often from build-up inside one of the facial sinuses (mucus-filled chambers that filter air), named the frontal, sphenoid, ethmoid, and maxillary sinuses. Inspired by the etymology of the sinus names, the poem describes different ways that liquids/gasses interact with other objects. Frontal (front-most), sphenoid (wedge-like) and ethmoid (sieve-like, a device for sorting grains by size) were used directly; maxillary (jaw-like) inspired themes of communication, community and, consequently, sport.

The Poet

JN Nucifera is a queer visual artist, poet, and PhD candidate in environmental engineering. His research, both scientific and artistic, focuses on combining methodologies and approaches to separate and remove toxic components. He discovered his poetic voice in the spoken word scene in Glasgow, Scotland as a Fulbright scholar, during which he competed at UniSlam 2018. His most recent poems have been published in anthologies by Speculative Books and Arachne Press.

Next poem: In the absence of cures by Abigail Flint