The fever scratches at my door
I yell from the kitchen that now is not a good time
The scratching pauses
In the silence I sink back into myself, like wading into a cool swimming hole, the leaves of the surrounding trees fluttering like nervous birds, but my naked body is calm and neither in the future or the past, just here in the lapping water
The fever scratches again, more insistently, and my body is pulled from the water, a tumult of words churn the treetops and the leaves are no longer anxious birds, but angry dogs, hungry ones, and the barking along with the scratching
I yell again IT IS NOT A GOOD TIME and there is no pause and the scratching has become banging and the door breaks down and I can feel the fever heat spread towards me across the floor and up my body and I am burning and shaking and I can not discern one noise from another from words or meaning
All there is now is please please stop make it stop
I promise to stop wanting what I want
I promise to let go
Please let me breathe
Please give me silence and return my nervous birds to me
But the trees shake themselves out of the ground and come crashing into the kitchen and through the floor and through the foundation and their weight forcing a hole in the earth and me and the kitchen and the trees crash right through magma and out the other side and into a landscape that might as well be the moon
And all the silence of being lost and alone should be terrifying but instead I find myself breathing and still
The landscape unfamiliar
But the scratching stopped
I look around for somewhere to swim
