2002-01-19 || 11:35 a.m.

|| evil. ||

it's oddly romantic, the rickety passage of communicable diseases, falling from lip to lip like i love yous, like secrets. viruses are popbeads, are costume jewelry strung on grand chains flashing and glinting among working cells. this is what happened: i got this from i don't know where, from the warm handle of a cart in the grocery store, from a fleeting goodbye kiss on market street, from letting that man hold my hand when i helped him cross shattuck. this is what happened: you brought me juice. you ruffled my hair. you let me cough into your shirt as you hugged me goodbye and get better. intake of breath between those well wishing syllables and it went down quite easily, the virus wiggling just a bit to catch the light dramatically before delving into your respiratory system. days and days and it distends, it reclines, it sets up transmitters, surveillance devices, rest stops. it is waning in me as it is waxing in you. i feel guilty. i feel the opportunity to mother and nurture. i go to your house bearing juice and prescribed medicine and a thermometer. you can't see it but there is a red cross on my chest under my coat, directly over the mass of phlegm and virus still fighting in my lungs. i am contagious and you are contagious. but i can stand up and you can't. i feed you and wash your dishes. i sing with you on the four track with broken cackly voices. you go to lie down and i read your diary and read notes on the floor from girls and i find a picture of me under your couch gathering dust and fibers from used kleenex, sick flannel sheets. you're sick because of me. i wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy but finding its way inside of you it's somehow appropriate, somehow satisfying.

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