Catch

There’s a way to catch a disease. It requires knowing the right people. You start by looking outside the guidelines. Find the cracks, the margin. Cast your light beyond what you know and into perceived darkness.

You might wonder why you want to catch a disease. Sometimes you don’t know. Sometimes you’re running from an inevitability. It won’t be fun. It won’t be easy. The big thing to recognize is that you aren’t operating from within. You’re a big thinker for that. Congrats.

Once you find a host you’ll likely consume them. Metaphorically and literally. Your consumption revives them, like the hydra. The more you chew and swallow, the more it comes.

After this feast, you’ll feel righteous. But you’ll be sick. Stumbling around the rhetorical corners swinging your body like a cannonball. I wish you could see yourself.

For some, they don’t feel righteous. There is desperation that creeps across their skin, pocking them and creating an itch that tickles the bone and is unsatisfied with mortal instruments. Their future lies with the worms and scorched earth.

And perhaps, most likely for you, getting sick was an escape. It was a brush with another life close to losing the thing that made it so: life. You may emerge unscathed and feel like a great big ellipsis at the end of an expense report. You’ll look to the grey sky, longing for rain and looking at it but never quite feeling it or hearing it. How hot, how terribly hot.

So now what?