New Poem: "Oliver's Germs"

A poem by Bryan Borland on the occasion of being infected with respiratory gunk at the hands of nephew Oliver. (Click this link to hear this performed in full-on sick voice.)

OLIVER’S GERMS

I am holding the child,

his small body warm as fresh bread,

his breath rough in his chest,

a little animal trying to catch its own shadow.

We’ve been running through rooms

as if joy were the cure

the body never rejects.

But now he sags against me,

and I feel the fever

in the place where his ribs meet mine.

Still, the world keeps opening.

We lie down. We rise again.

We make a ceremony of blankets.

Over and over I tell him I love you

the words falling out of me

like seeds planted for

the next strange season.

I love you every chance I get,

as if there won’t be another,

as if I can fill him up

with all the things a human needs to hear.

I see my work as preparing him for life.

His mother comes beside us, smiling,

and asks him:

Where are Uncle Bryan’s eyes?

The boy lifts a spit-wet finger

and presses it to my face.

Where is his nose?

His finger, shining with snot,

finds that too.

I feel the passage,

the invisible moving

from him into me.

Where is his mouth?

He touches it,

and I swallow the sickness

the way the ocean takes

whatever falls into it.

Where is his belly?

He taps, claiming me wholly.

I respond, Let me wipe your nose

with my shirt, Perfect Boy.

Now a week has passed,

and so the sickness.

You can hear it in my voice.

My throat aches,

my lungs weigh a little more each night.

His germs wander through me

like travelers who have found

a place willing to shelter them.

I am so miserable.

God I love that kid.