amphibi.us

I can see the Flag waving at my school.
I walk there, and back again, of course, when
I’m well, but today I threw up breakfast
and Mother kept me home. I have some bug
so I lie in my attic bedroom
and stare at the ceiling, white as milk.
Then I’m sick again and barely make it
down to our one bathroom for six people
but all I do is throw up air–it must
be bad air, though, and I’m glad to be rid
of it. Do you feel better, Mother asks.
What a question. If I didn’t feel well
I wouldn’t be sick to my stomach. Oh
–she means do I feel better for having
just vomited. I don’t know what to say
so that must mean that I’m still feeling bad.
I’m not sure, I say. It’s hard to tell. Go
back to bed, she says. Try to get some rest.
Okay, I say. I walk up the fourteen
steps to my bedroom and climb into bed.
I’m not really sleepy and I don’t want
to die. I suppose that it’s possible:

I could shut my eyes and drift away and
when I open them again I won’t be
here, though my body will. I’ll be gone to
Heaven if I’ve been good enough–I’m no
judge but I do try–or Hell, which is worse
than the flu. If I were Satan and had
to punish me for Eternity then
I’d have me puking ’til the Judgment Day.
And just when I thought I was better I’d
puke again. That’s how I’d punish me. God
couldn’t do any better and Satan
would do worse. My body would be buried
–only my spirit would be throwing up
and it won’t have a body anymore
and I wonder what that feels like, to be
who you are but without what you look like.

But when I wake it’s in this world again.
I’m hungry so I must be better. I
go downstairs to the kitchen, where Mother
is sipping Sanka and smoking Salems.
How are you feeling now, she asks. I’m dead,
I say, and this is Heaven, isn’t it?
Yes, she says, playing along. Tomorrow
I’ll go back to school, I say. There is no
school in Heaven, she says. No church, either.

© Gale Acuff, 2010