Hay Fever

Hay Fever

We swim,
Like impending shark attack victims
Through an ocean of them;
Cloying little dybbukkim*.

We lumber, stumble,
Pant our way forward.
All that matters is completing each tiny task before us.
(Dignity is better left to some other family.)
(Say, people who can breathe.)
They weren’t nearly this difficult
Yesterday.
Or a week ago.


What was it like,
To climb these stairs without
My heart pounding like a madwoman’s?
When did breath become a commodity,
Sold in little plastic tubes?

I would be an accuser with a poisoned finger,
If only I could see them…
(Am I imagining my weakness?)
(Am I going deaf? Ill?)
They make me old before my time.

Wheezing, I part sticky lips
To swallow some pathetic attempt at reprieve
From spring’s wicked outburst of floral coitus.

It never helps enough.

So we shuffle on, fighting to
Get through the motions that were not this difficult
A week ago, in the middle of winter,
When the whole of nature slept.

Sleep is our enemy—it allows the demons time to rally.

Wake up with a heavy chest,
Heavy, clogged, congested and heaving.

May every P.E. teacher know my pain.
In March.
With the crash of the very first wave.
In October.
When it festers in the leaves.
Let them feel the swelling of lungs and lymph nodes,
Let them fight for air on the first leg of an imposed mile run.
Let them be blinded by frustration,
And the semen of perennials and annuals alike.

I am cursed with an overactive immune system.
Is it possible God made a mistake?

Or is this my penance for a childhood spent
Indoors?








*(Jewish folklore) a demon that enters the body of a living person and controls that body's behavior