medicated

The head pounding set in Saturday evening. I knew something was coming, my whole body felt warm with a slight ache. Sunday and Monday are a complete blur. I didn't leave the apartment, I didn't eat, and my thoughts quickly became sporadic and non-sensical. I cursed the juice company Tampico for profiting off my illness. Eventually, it was only slipping and sliding: slipping in and out of consiousness and sliding blanket-wrapped across the floor trying keep myself in the slanted rectangles of the sun's afternoon window-rays.

The sun set and I was irrationally concerned that I would be unable to warm myself through the night. I needed to call someone! tell them that I wasn't thinking straight, that I was vomiting, and that I felt like crying. After maybe thirty minutes I managed to located the keys and proper change. But then I thought about having to walk all the way outside and around the corner to the phone, would anything be worth that! I chose to stay inside and mumble. "I can't breathe" "I can't go to the campo" "My eye's will turn yellow" "I won't have health to go to France" "I'll never see Africa again."



restless night


This morning Wes was home and I was awake for the first time. I told him about this headache.



He gave me a green pill.




With my glasses off I sat and watched the clear-day, bright-brick colors of El Alto jump in and out of the window. I watched Wes play legos with the Baker's trilingual child: english, spanish, and three-year-old speech (a language that is rarely directed toward any one person, completely devoid of vocabulary and syntax but amazingly expressive by means of intonation alone).

Within the hour my brain felt no pain.

I posited a scientific theory. The green pill probably made my heart beat a little faster than it needed, sending excess oxygen to my head, numbing and buzzing the pain centers of my brain . . . or somesuch tumbling of physiologic dominos. But I quickly rejected it. The remedy must have been those thoughts of loved ones induced by child's play and sun colors.

The always consistant arc of Dave Weber's smile.

The broad stance and non-self-confidence confidence of Ethan Van Drunen giving smiles in exchange for life promotions.

Doug Harbin's genuine enthusiasm and child-like fascination with the bassoon.

My sister with bones loose in their skin, swept up in the current, sharing time and washing dishes.