Often Described As

the most terrible pain known to man,
trigeminal neuralgia
ricochets around my face, pulsing
electric-shocks. My doctor advises

cutting the nerve in my cheek, the only hope
of stopping the torture. He mentions
some patients consider
suicide. My husband has just revealed

he’s moving to Ohio for a better
job and another woman.
In fear’s fast-flowing river, I yearn
to believe some god might intervene.

Agony catches in my jaw, throbs
down the right side of my neck,
renders me paralytic. Medical websites
recount horrors worse than those I heard

as a young girl over campfires.
Like the one where a girl with a red ribbon
around her neck loses her head
when the bow is untied. The knife,

my cheek, the belligerent nerve
destined to meet. I try bargaining
with the Divine. Then, the final insult: I bite
through a tooth as though it were

a dinner roll. The dentist laughs
at the doctor’s misdiagnosis.
“You have TMJ, temporo-
mandibular joint. A simple night guard

will alleviate the pain,” he says,
then describes the machinery
of my mouth. How the hinge connecting
jawbone and skull rotates like a waterwheel

when I sleep—my teeth
grinding the grist of my life.