Insomnia Diary

Cure for the common cold

Cure for the common cold I was having an affair with fever as winter dreamed its first snow, as trees became old men in unbuttoned long johns, as wind locked its face in the river’s ice. Under seven blankets I invented July. Daylilies grew from my underarms. My head was a field grasshoppers mowed with lyrical scythes. In each eye was a lake, in each lake a man in a rowboat read Moby Dick to trout to make them brave. When the fever broke and I opened the gaze of the curtains, I thought I’d parachuted into another mind. I was in Andy Hardy’s swimsuit. I was chewing grape hyacinth. But instead of a beer in my hand I needed a shovel. Instead of a tan it was time for January’s albino camouflage. I wanted back into the fever, its red walls, the lush carpet from the Everglades.  I was happier sweating because it proves the body’s made of rain. I was happier hallucinating a beach because I’m a better man in the presence of a water slide. I was happier when my flesh was a sauna because I could run like a naked Swede through cow-shaped hills and burn away the snow with my thighs. People would see my brand on the earth, the singed and fat signature of my existence. They’d go off in search of their own fevers, kissing the maps of tongues, licking the dirty maze of fingertips. Winter is always rape, a curse against our hunger, because we starve for seven pomegranate seeds. Proserpina got this much right: be the best at picking blossoms: be the best at tasting where rivers sleep in rock: be the best at harboring a thaw in your body, lips and thighs that will open to the sun, skin you can peel and throw into the mouth of the sky like a monarch you made from scratch.  ...