Pounding in My Head: The Beginnings of 'One Request'

The sounds of a library in the afternoon. Only I am mentally moaning. Heads are buried beneath books and reviewers. Lips moving soundlessly, turning legal definitions into chants. Only the sound of my seatmates’ whispers. An ambulance wails past the campus. This moment is really rotten. Everyone is reciting some legal mantra and here I am, tormented by a thousand invisible gavels.

The recorded discussion in my cellphone makes no sense—just a teacher’s voice droning on. I will myself to stay calm. Abandoning my lessons, I swallow the scream about to escape my throat. I think of a poem I’ve read before. Come away, O human child/ To the waters and the wild.

I smile at those lines. Green meadows stretch endlessly before me. I hear the waterfall gushing powerfully. Faeries have fun in the distance, their laughter musical. They show me a basket of fat red berries, their faces split by mischievous grins.

I snap out of my reverie as my classmate borrows my library card. The pounding in my head returns. I am reminded of that medieval torture machine where the poor convict’s body is stretched beyond limits till he dies a painful death. I take my pencil and command my hand to open a notebook.

‘What are you doing?’ my classmate asks, returning from the photocopy corner.

‘Just writing.’

He peers over my notebook with a quizzical look. ‘About what?’

I try to ignore the gavels that turned into metal hammers. ‘Just thoughts. Pounding in my head.’

He nods. He goes on his way and I continue to write the ideas that flowed in. And as I write each word, each line, each stanza, every heavy pounding seems to cease for a moment.