Parasitic

The hard porcelain bathtub cradles my body, crumpled like paper wet from the rain, and the lukewarm water stings uncomfortably, and yet my eyelids slowly close. Uncomfortable things have an annoying habit of being helpful.

The room feels stagnant in a slightly doomed way– like a glass of water left in the heat, impending bacteria and mosquito eggs– until the door opens a crack.

“Hey, hon,” a low voice calls in from the hallway, and my eyes snap open again. I let out a weak croak in response. “I brought you some aloe. Can I come in?”

I feel my chest rise, then fall like a forming sinkhole, and call on all my energy to respond “Yeah.”

When she walks in, she looks only somewhat worried, and sits down on the stool next to me, towels I’d set aside for myself stacked between her and its wooden seat. “How’re you feeling?”

I can’t do much but shrug my shoulders, exhausted and ashamed. I know she’s disappointed– biting her tongue to hold in all the ways I could stop being so sick, stop letting myself get sicker.

I lower my eyes, watching the way my breasts rise and fall with my breathing, gaze tracing the cracking on my nipples and the redness creeping out from my sternum. “I feel sorry,” I add too late– a sheepish and shitty apology, maybe, or just some self pity.

She nods and purses her lips, and I watch her unwrap a cut up brown paper bag, a large aloe leaf wet and heavy inside– one slice already cut down the middle. I close my eyes and wait a moment, then feel the cool gel snake up my arm and shoulder.

When she lifts the leaf from my skin, she sets it down beside her and sighs, looking down at me.

She wipes her hands on her skirt, then holds my hair up and out of the way, pressing a kiss to my neck. I imagine an aphid suckling the sap from a leaf, a mosquito drawing blood, a tick buried, hidden in fur.