VIRUS

I once had a fever so high,

I was left to my bed for 7 days.

There was a man,

Standing on my mattress with a shovel

Lifting chunks out of it angrily.

He wiped his brow and his sweat

Collected in the divots of my blanket

And made a little pond.

A scum pond,

With talking frogs and lily pads.

The pond grew deeper as the man dug harder and sweated.

I was drowning.

A goldsh swam up my throat and flopped around in my mouth.

I clenched my jaw and tossed and turned in the scum pond.

White and gray algae blinding me,

And filling my nose with fuzzy mold.

I tried to scream and retrieve the fish from the back of my mouth.

I was choking.

I tried to kick, but the man was standing on my legs.

His weight was too much to bear

And I feared that shovel would dismount onto my head

And split my skull if I provoked him any more.

I tried to yank the sh out again but it struggled.

It attached its jaws to the opening of my throat and it would not budge.

I yanked.

And I screamed.

And my mother came rushing into the room, tripping over her feet.

I was trying to rip out my tongue.

She fixed my blankets.

She stroked my hair that stuck to me like cotton candy dissolving in water.

I wanted to cry but feared I’d fill the pond again.

When my fever broke, I realized the man and the fish were all a dream,

And so was she.