Fever

A man with no fingers waves his fingers at me. My third day of amoebic dysentery and though my yellow eye can see, they see what they choose to. The guy is not a feverish delusion, he comes to my house every morning to sweep my veranda. I hear my young wife scolding our Siamese cat, its brought another snake home, Chiang Mai abounds with them, but today my skin is crawling enough. The guy with no fingers – just stubs, goes under the house to hunt for larger snakes; the house is on stilts and I imagine his head under my cot. his skull is slowly blooming. leprosy flowers are sprouting from the hole at the top of his head. The word ‘puce’ will always make me think of puss from now on. From now on I buy only red flowers for my wife. There is hardly any blood-letting at the leprosy institute just a slow wearing a way of dry flesh, and me with a fever that will return forty years later. Tropical Ohio lasts for some days. I imagine the cot, the mosquito nets, a slow moving fan too high above to save me from a febrile drowning; then the serpent in my brain passes away from lack of sleep and an excess of chicken broth.