When Our Bodies Endure

I lie down and my body and the surface underneath become one, flesh and fabric intertwined. Too tired for verticality. Three weeks ago something invaded my body, something whose name I still can't recall despite having been told twice, despite having repeated it myself so I would remember, as if tasting the word would help retain it. All I know is this is not unusual. Bodies are invaded all the time. When you're alive, everyone and everything wants a piece of you. Life attracts life. Songs from another world play in my head as my body attempts to get rid of this foreign entity. It fights and fights, sending waves of sharp pain on top of a layer of dull pain. The invader travels through my body. It's strange to imagine this microscopic organism exploring the life I contain. I heard our bodies hold more bacterial cells than human cells. What does that make us? More home than human? I find beauty in that thought, our cells dancing with all these other cells. Isn't that tru