And twice during a routine, feeling some thread of weakness flutter up through my sacrum and overtake me
for a brief.
(not needing to qualify that.)
Knowing and uttering out loud that something was coming for me.
And this blasé man of work to my left quipping:
“Don’t say that. You say: I’m not going to get sick because I’m going to fight this.”
Is that what I say? Well I took to heart and my mind repeated those words. I thought of my strength but knew these efforts were resigned.
And the pedal over the bridge that night felt like effort for once
felt like work.
I was done with being worked for the night.
Over the course of the next day the sickness slowly settled in with timid barking symptoms, affecting me like hiccups
doll waves of flickering whiteness
minor threatening interruptions.
So I prepared myself to rest and to fast and I turned my ears just inside out, multiplied them, and placed them too in my stomach and the aching portions of my back.
Morning I woke and coaxed myself out into the world
So separate. Measuring each step.
Stomach thin from one meal early the day prior I cozied into a bubbling café chair and read of shamans and altered mind states, of early life before humans knew what humans were (at what point did we specifically become humans, anyway?)
I cozied and I sank
Each time someone walked in the front door I checked my peripherals for Yona’s deliberate pace.
No one mocked it.
I alternated liquids and temps until the buzz of customers around me began to grow invasive and I was nodding.
Bought some vegetables to make soup for later and tenderly made it home,
a plaid autumnal smoking jacket, unwashed hair loose and a bag of broccoli in each hand.
Walking through the alley I never avoid, a man in a curling mustache darted past on a bicycle
tails of his long woolen peacoat fluttering in his wake.
Smile to myself.
At times it pleases me to remain this contained (move so undetected) inside a community. At times this “community” is enough
But more often I long for the love of a true one, honestly knit together and bound to last for many seasons.
Weakness nearly prevented me from completing the stairs to my apartment’s front door. I dropped the groceries and made a can of soup and two eggs that I flipped with a spoon.
It occurred to me that I wanted to nest in a warm bed of blankets and
there was nothing more I could have wished for at that moment than two perfect arms of someone with love, encasing me and completing that nest.
Yona came.
And that night still seems a dream.
Him there in the darkness with me (but not like before).
Little icicle spiders overtaking my body and slowly, quietly drenching the sick tendrils of my hair made oily with manufactured visions
My own fevered imaginings, held in by lids too heavy to remain open
weighted down by utter resignation
the give way to enjoying these altered states of consciousness
these fantastic tales weaving themselves in a premise unable to be accessed by any other human no matter the closeness no matter the want
this spatial realm of just mine and just mine body’s and only shared with this some force which holds and teaches me throughout time, this
god
I am reminded of my first psilocybin experience
lasting for hours.
When I melted into this blanketed comfortered mess middling the wide space of my old apartment and became a young girl I’d surely seen on television years before
one of those young characters in The Crucible
the women of lore wearing long tatty hair and white nightgowns lined with molded lace
the ones who amassed themselves in a bed or on the floor, ripped at themselves and screamed with lungs that never wanted to close, only might bellow and moan,
and threw about wild glances looking at nothing anyone else could see
these girls of old puritan times – the “hysterical” women no one could seem to cure or control
their fits of madness either put to spells of witchcraft or fever sickness
the fact that they were swimming in another realm entirely purely scaring their authorities.
He kept bringing me back, bobbing like a buoy between the fevered mind and the space in reality we shared
My lids quietly shuttering centimeters and my mouth breathing raspy drying air which must have been saved over from before
surely I was barely breathing new air
but my talent was pushing it out with force
and these images, these worlds I was coming to when lent myself completely to the sickness
how entirely I was able to feel what my body craved
how deliciously it led me to ice and water
and a memory of being sick as a girl
sheltered away in my darkened grey childhood bedroom, my bed pressed into a corner just across from the door [how many times that bedroom’s since changed]
Suffering fevered but kept safe and let to rest in that whole uncharted space.
Waking in that room at the wrong time of day, the sun having already touched down and the heat of cooking softly filling the hallway
Gingerly, I’d swing my weightless legs over the side of the bed and let the sounds of silver clanking in the kitchen warm me
I’d open the door and step, blinking, into the light
face pink with fever and eyes glossy
And there they’d be, the three of them sat at their respective spaces with a full dish in front of them each
and a fixed plate holding my own place
just me not in the chair
“You made it just in time for dinner!”
My throat washing down with love and concentrated nourishment she’d made specifically for me
I never take my temperature anymore.
And usually, when I get sick, I deal with it alone.
It’s the only time I feel loneliness and bite down regret for this self-contained life I like to lead. My pieces-of-people life.
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V'Artichoke 