Infection.

No sleep, no sleep, no sleep. Fire ants filled the back of my throat. Honey lemon cough drops, a tall glass of ice water. No sleep, no sleep. I crawled to the tile, filled the basin, faded into the water. I pressed my hands flat against the surface. Rapids fell from silver cliffs, cascading into porcelain bowls. I emerged naked freckles beneath an inch of water, slowly scalding. It was quiet there, beneath the ripples. Knuckles cracked, tiny maracas, my ears heard everything different. Illness cocooned itself between the caved walls of my skin, wrapping winter around my bones like white lights around the banister. A conscious effort was made to slow my breathing, to be still. Water pooled around my stomach, my breasts, my jaw line. Water slipped into my open mouth, swimming on my tongue like a pool of mercury. Into my breathing lips, my pink lungs. It seeped into the tiny corners of my eyes and soaked inside my skin. Acid rain. The rapids slowed, the waves calmed, my coughing ceased. I slipped into a blue cloth and back beside a percolating blood stream.
The water, it heals me.

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Weinberg