Spirochete Vaudeville (Fever Dream Remix)

I am beginning to think
the tick had better bedside manner.

Not good bedside manner.
Not kindness.
Not anything you could embroider
on a pillow
without alarming the guests.

But honesty, in the old brutal sense.

It found flesh.
It chose flesh.
It entered
with the single-minded grace
of a bullet.

Now my body
has all the charm
of a cursed motel.

The plumbing screams.
The wiring spits.
My heart misfires
like a cheap gun in a glove box.
It feels like my skeleton
got replaced with wet matches,
all that soft collapse,
all that damp refusal to hold.

The tick, at least,
had a thesis.
Blood.

One ugly little hymn
sung directly into the skin.
Blood, blood, blood.

Everything after that
has been improvisation.

A bacterial farce.
Swamp-fever vaudeville.
Some microscopic thug
dragging a filthy brush
through the bloodstream
and calling the mess
a landscape.

It hangs little lanterns of pain
in the joints.
Sets the skull ringing.
Turns the muscles
into a drawer
full of snapped rosaries.

Every morning
my body wakes
with new management.

Yesterday,
the knees.
Today,
the heart.
Tomorrow,
perhaps the left hand
will declare itself haunted.

There are no rules.
Only symptoms
changing costumes backstage,
stepping beneath the spotlight
one by one
to take a bow.

Fatigue enters wearing concrete shoes.
Nausea arrives with a cigarette holder.
Brain fog forgets its own lines
and wanders into the orchestra pit.

Somewhere,
a tiny violin
is being played
by a spirochete.
Hideous.
But committed.

And this is where
the whole thing becomes rude.
Because the bite was simple.
The aftermath is not.

The aftermath
is a funhouse
built inside the body,
floor tilting,
mirrors smirking,
every exit
opening into another symptom.

It is a courtroom permanently in session.

EXHIBIT A: the rash

EXHIBIT B: the fever

EXHIBIT C:
my pulse behaving
like it has recently
discovered cocaine

The prosecution rests.
The defense would like
another blood test.

Meanwhile,
I am fever-bright,
pill-bitter,
my blood full of mutiny,
trying to determine
which sensation is dangerous,
which is temporary,
which belongs to Lyme,
which belongs to the medicine,
which belongs to a body
that has simply grown tired
of being interrogated.

There should be
a more dignified way
to become woodland collateral.

Perhaps a ribbon-cutting.

Perhaps a small plaque:
HERE LIES
THE PREVIOUSLY FUNCTIONAL
NERVOUS SYSTEM.
PLEASE DO NOT FEED
THE SPIROCHETES.

Instead,
I keep discovering new rooms
in the cursed motel.

A hallway behind the ribs.
A flickering vacancy sign behind the eyes.

Something scratching
inside the walls
at three in the morning.

And still, for all this gothic nonsense,
the tick remains
almost refreshingly literal.

It wanted blood.
It took blood.
It left behind
a microscopic religion
and vanished.
No explanation.
No apology.
No customer satisfaction survey.

Just one red mark
opening its terrible mouth
against the skin
and my entire body
learning afterward
how many different ways
there are to say

something got in