Scarlet Fever

I dreamt my skin were red
by a bout of scarlet fever,
landlocked in my bed
like a prayer unanswered.
Just how’d it get this bad?
The furniture’s been rearranged.
I’m sweatin’ through the sheets;
my hands rusted, restless, writhing...
The barrow & the axe--
the labors I can’t make complete--
flashing in my eyes,
weighing heavy on my heart.
Yet you were in the room.
You cast open the shade,
tried to calm my boiling blood
& bloodlined name...
But when I wake, the features fade as swift as hours of a winter’s day,
till I’m left with bitter aftertaste, anxious & harrowed as a weathervane;
the details too sparse to recall.
{Meanwhile,} back inside my head,
we burned our history books,
but by the heat I was much oppressed
as a blossom in December’s chill.
I find the bathtub has been filled
with currencies of {all origin} size & shape,
so we drew up twine & plug
& watched the fortune
spiral down the drain.
But each time I wake, the meaning’s changed,
dissolved into malleable, mutable grey;
& these guilt-red hands & this shake shake shake,
oh, the fever & fret, the ephemeral faces
of specters haunting like childhood days
then gone like soot yawning off in the afternoon sky
or the raven & the dove’s flight.
My sorrow grows of some dour dichotomy,
branching & forking as the limbs of a willow tree.
But I understand this dual necessity,
& dispute’s like tryin’ to research "death" in a dictionary.
See, I’ve caught you frowning at the struggle inside of me:
hemispheres opposed behind a visage of ruddy cheek.
But I won’t allow this fever to get the best of me--
I am the raven & you are the dove.