Illness and Love

I've been ill lately; my body at times seems to belong to someone much older (at least in my head I'm still an awkward teen who longs for love but will settle for groping in a darkened theater--the prose of B movies swirling about private parts slightly tinged with the odor of moldy linen).

And, becalmed even at this hour of the morning as my dog sleeps on without me, I somehow know my health will come back, like the old French cinema classic where the boy approaches the sea, looks out, and turns back toward land, toward the humans despite the additional blows that await him.

I am in love, actually; no, not with another human, though she is nearing me just as deliberately as I swerve her way, but with this hour when the blood can't seem to fall asleep but nudges me: "Go ahead, it won't hurt, really."

Clearly, I'm strung out just as the heavens do their sleepwalk over my small rooftop; the hunter Orion has no choice but to clarify this dark patch of sky, for we all hunt for what we need, cleansed by God knows what, spurred by ill health and the promise of jam and cookies and a cool hand on our foreheads.

If I say, "This might be poetry," I would not win my case in court; if I say, "This is love," I would not win your heart. But why say anything at all if meaning is just subjective spark plugs firing in our brains; why say "I'm in love" if it matters, at best, only to me?

My doctor wants me to take tests that require induced sleep, a temporary "death," so to speak; a machine would breathe for me, but would a machine also dream for me? And in the tunnel that would surely guide me back, would I linger if only to scrawl on the walls just how much I love what can't be seen?