The Bug

Pain surrounds me and leaves me fitful

While exhaustion grips me, but will not

Let me enter sleep.

I do not even want to

Lift my limbs to stand.

I lay in bed half in dream

And half awake, wondering how long

This invasion will shred me

Like a coarse knife bluntly

Making one stroke after another,

At my joints and digestive tract

Till I feel like a ghost haunting a grave.

My body is not my body

It is bracken and whipped

By spirits in the house of demons.

In this night hell has found me.

Glass after glass of water

Crosses my lips.

You would think it would drown me.

My belly is swollen like a child

With no food and painful to touch.

I meditate.  I meditate deeply

To the rise of my temperature

To the sound of water leaving me

To the noises singing through my stomach

Uncontrollably bearing down on me–

But this is not childbirth.

Yet, I meditate on light over darkness.

And the light comes, and I remember

Who I am, while slowly pain ceases.

Maybe tomorrow the smell of food

Will once again beguile me. 

©Roseroberta