Sick Bed

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February

I've soaked through my Christian Dior bleached cotton nightgown, covers pulled up to my neck, white on white.
We're in Marrakesh, day three, in an orange blossom scented guesthouse in the old city.
I'm in a small room with only a curtain to separate the bedroom from the bathroom. I spent the previous night coughing and crying on the floor by the toilet, afraid to disturb the entire riad.
I look like scarlet fever, a portrait of the past.
Leave me here, I say. I'll be fine. (gentle coughs)
I have been given a packet of flu pills from a suspicious pharmacy and a bag of crystal mints procured from the souk.
Getting sick in an exotic location is a double edged sword.
Your trip is ruined-
but you can forever paint the memory of a soft, fragrant breeze blowing through a glassless window over your weak and fashionable body.



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There is a family on Dr. Phil and I think they're wearing wigs.
I think they might be actors and I wonder how hard it is to find people with problems to go on TV and talk about them.
I think their wigs are really obvious and I wonder why they can't get better ones because now I'm distracted by what their real hair looks like. Is it opposite? Like if the woman is blonde, does she get a brown wig?
I think the "husband" is wearing a fake beard so now I know he has no beard.
Maybe they aren't actors but are just worried about what their friends and family will say. But wouldn't their friends and family be the ones to identify them best?
If any of my pals went on Dr.Phil with a wig on, you'd bet your ass I'd know its them.
Be on the lookout for a middle aged couple:
A guy with no beard and a blonde woman with possible narcissistic personality disorder.


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A fever dream:

I'm bored and hopeless, stuck somehow in my small hometown.
There's an abandoned turn of the century factory on the townline that I walk to every day.
I walk because I have nothing better to do and I go there because I'm wanted there, as if pulled by an invisible cable.
The factory can be accessed by a weathered wooden door which creaks open to reveal a vast interior roughly the size of a football field. The shell of the building is red brick with lofty ceilings and tall boarded up windows throughout. I imagine at one time it was bright and pleasant; I like to think that the workers were happy there.
The space is empty of all manufacturing implements and the floor is made up of mounds of soft dirt and dust.
My imagination soars here; there is palpable magic.
I arrive one time to find a demolition crew set to work on tearing the factory down.
I'm dismayed but continue to visit daily to monitor the destruction.
I learn that the workers are preparing the structure to be divided lengthwise in two so each side can be demolished separately.
I am confused by the needless complication and watch sadly as a large and terrible gash slowly splits the building apart.
I wake up and briefly note the banality of the dream.
I am later hit by it's quiet instruction.
An enduring structure, once flourishing with humanity and productivity, must firstly be divided in two.
The separation disables the functionality and original purpose of the building and there is no recourse left but to raze the two halves.
The walls are reduced to bricks, the bricks to dust and I must find a new place to walk to.




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My friend says he checks for monsters under his bed first thing when he gets home, he says girls check for intruders.
It's true, we expect a madman to be waiting in the dark behind the door.
We fumble for our keys and look behind to make sure nobody followed us home from the bus stop.
I check for intruders and monsters, I say. I cover all the bases.
He says he sometimes hears a whisper in his ear or senses a dark presence when he sleeps.
We smudged his apartment recently, just winged it. I googled smudging and we cleansed the hell out of that place. I can't tell if it took......