Fever

Falling sick

And so it feels like this, then, like dewdrops off the slope of a marigold and the shine of a doctor’s penlight — straight into the eye — pupils dilate, tongues go dry, squirming in your mother’s grasp. And so it feels like pressing warmth in your abdomen, snakes made of glass shards wriggling just centimetres beneath your skin, like if you bit down hard enough on the soft part of your wrist they might just come escaping out like scaly earthworms. They cut you up inside and you are the metamorphosis of a thousand lifetimes, squandered into the waddling shape of a fat little boy, a fat little girl, a fat little hunk of meat screaming and crying for your mum not to take you to the devil’s chair, please no, please I’ll be good. The devil makes you eat plastic powder that burn the forest in your lungs — squirrels end up in the base of your throat sometimes, their fur stuck indefinitely in between the wedges of your mountain teeth — during particularly bad days, your nose runs with gallons of river water, all yellow with sediment soil and miserable grief. There is a thought in your head when your mother straps you up and puts you in his chair, promising sweet things, that lollipop you liked — and so it feels like this, then, like raindrops that burn acid through the ozone of your skin, like the gates of heaven that are really just the twin frames of the doctor’s spectacles. Still you cannot help but stare as the devil comes peering at you, the mask stretched tight like secondary skin across his mouth, and goes Well, how are you feeling today?