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James Davis May A Lasting Sickness poetr y Five nights into fever, you lie in bed as your parents, urgent, move about you in the soft, almost birthday-candle-dim light. If you're in pain, you won't remember, though the fever's so high it's likely you've reached that euphoric state in which the dying or near-dying see the oblong silhouettes of angels, hear the shapeless voices of the dead. Instead, you see your mother watching you, along with a vigil of good soldiers: the stuffed bears, the purple rabbit, the papier-mâché parrot perched on a painted hanger. Your father plunges a washcloth again into a mixing bowl of ice water, brings it to your head, and you fall back asleep to the sounds of your own being cared for. If you were the boy who remembers this well after forgetting the cause, if it haunts you like, say, unrepeatable pleasure or a good dream you've never learned to disbelieve, so that each sickness-- pneumonia at eighteen, shingles at twenty-three--reminds you of what others have done for you and what others will do, their hands working your clammy wrists and brow, kneading the minty balm again and again into your chest,
The Missouri Review – University of Missouri
Published: Oct 17, 2013
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