the hypochondriac
Brennan Kenneth Brown |
(note: lack of capitalization + use of “yr” is intentional”)
sixth day bedridden & my bones gasoline—the kind of ache that petroleums through marrow, makes joints creek like abandoned church doors. my skull milk-teeth the pillow, every nerve ending windowsilling into dusk. yr ghost still cottonmouths the sheets, fever-fresh & piss-clean, while whatever virus bloodrivers through me threatens to make a temporary hell permanent. too weak to walk into the hallway.
WebMD midnights: maybe Lyme disease forestfucking my white cells, or COVID playing the long game, carpenter-anting through organs until nothing works right. or maybe me/cfs came to altar me, chronically fatiguing my hands until they forget how to pray, how to write, how to do anything but thermometer this blazing 39.2°c flesh into meaning.
ancestors cigarette-whisper diagnostics from behind my eyelids: sometimes the body sage-bundles what the heart won’t burn. my sweat petroleums the mattress, each breath gasping like a walleye hauled from Red River, gills crusading for oxygen while MayoClinic rabbit-holes into another apocalypse of possibilities.
gravity bruises differently now, each heartbeat thunderbirding against ribs, medicine-wheeling these questions: what if this is forever? Body gone reservation, colonized by invisible enemy treaty-breaches through my blood. what if the days keep frankensteining body parts into permanent stranger?
night nurses the window, moonlight gasoline-spilling across carpet and I count ceiling-tile constellations, wondering if health is love—hallwaying us awake, interrupted by morning.
