tell me about how they wake up in the morning only to immediately wish that they hadn’t;
how the never-ending, crawling itch is like a thousand red-hot barbs buried in their membranes - nose, palate, throat, eyes, all ablaze with allergic inflammation;
how the maddening, feathery sensation in their sinuses never quite let up, leaving them glassy-eyed and squinting and their nostrils in quivery, semi-permanent flare;
tell me about how they rub their nose, fervently, desperately, again and again, a knuckled finger sawing back and forth beneath their nostrils, their palm pushing up against their septum in a harsh, upward swipe, the bridge of their nose squeezed between two forefingers, kneading up and down until their entire nose is glowing an angry, swollen red;
tell me about how they scrunch their nose up and wiggle it around, pull down their upper lip and then back up again in a frustrated snarl; how their nostrils twitch involuntarily, reddened ovals widening and tensing as they try to sniffle through impenetrable congestion;
tell me about how they must get through their day regardless, how they struggle to stay focused on the task at hand through a haze of heavy medication that only barely takes the edge off their symptoms and still leaves their head a prickling mass of irritation;
tell me about that first sneeze, the one they’ve been fighting for the past half hour, as the itch reaches that unbearable peak where their willpower finally folds and their reflexes take over, and as much as they don’t want to, they need to, they have to -
tell me about how sneezing once is about as effective as not sneezing at all;
how five minutes later they’re still at it, still barely able to draw breath in between unrelenting, wildly ticklish outbursts;
how attempting to blow their nose then only triggers the urge anew;
tell me about the expression on their face as their breath is hijacked once more, describe the anguished slant of their eyebrows, the sneering curl of their top lip, the glinting teardrops gathering in the corners of their eyes, their nostrils pulsing with an uneven rhythm as they hitch, and hitch, and hitch -
ellievsbear
stormborns
theartofmadeline
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