The Fever

I had wanted to tell you, Doctor
That when you reached over me
Lost in your employment
The thread from your blue shirt
One evicted thread
Had hung above my lips like a fishing line
And in the terror of illness
In the swim of my body’s madness
I accepted it, as a prescription
I let the thread hang on my tongue
Greedy for it
Assuming some cure

But I know now, Doctor
Now that I can sit up in the bed
And take my food without help
That it was merely
A sign of your man’s carelessness
A thoughtless thing dropped
Over a lolling creature with the darting eyes
Of an animal

But I must tell you
While I am confessing this
While I sit here, well, but depleted
My hair all wet
My nightgown gathered to me
I must say that in my fever
I had such clear dreams
The ones that seem like memory
Or prediction

The story now is lost
But in my dream
You had filled my mouth
With something that worked
Like concrete
You had done it on purpose
So that I could not speak to you
To watch my expressions
To direct my gaze to you
To force my little hands
To flutter signals for everything
I could ever need to say

And even now
As I tell you this
As you hold your blue cuff
As you stare silently
At the sharp crease in your pant leg
With that startled, condemned expression
The memory of this implausible handicap
This indefinable and airy crime
Has made me ill doctor
‘Til now
It has made me mute