Runny Nose

It runs. Continuously. No sooner have you blown your nose than it's full again. Clear, watery fluid that finds no hold, that simply runs out, as if your body has decided to open a floodgate that no longer closes on its own. Along with it often a scratching in the throat, a pressure on the cheekbones, a strange exhaustion that seems disproportionate to the banality of the symptom.

Medicine calls it rhinitis, rhinorrhea, acute or chronic cold. Viruses, allergens, cold air, dry indoor heating — the usual suspects. All correct. And yet it doesn't explain why it's striking you now. Why in precisely this week, this phase of your life. Why your body has made this choice — to express, precisely through the nose, what needs to be expressed.