stomach flu

in my feverish slumber i imagined myself a cow, a dairy cow.  i was one of many, each of us having a mailbox shaped body.  and each time my stomach turned in on itself and began punching out with electric shock boxing gloves, i imagined that we cows where being driven by prods to our milking stations.  and i would get up in my great agony and nearly crawl on my hands and knees toward the great porcelain milking machine.  and there i would release and writhe, the beige walls and a clock that ticks but whose second hand never moves were my only witnesses.  my eyes never opened.  i would lay myself down in the pasture of my twin bed and wait for the next milking.  but i knew and all the other cows knew that the farmers were getting no milk.  they were mistaking the water coming out of us for milk which was foolish and these farmers never seemed to learn.  i looked for logic, an explanation.  i gathered my cow friends next to me and pondered.  it began to thunder, the rumbling in my stomach transformed into menacing skies.  i watched as the rain began to collect in our open top mail box bodies.  that was it!  our bodies were filling with water because we had our open sides facing the sky.  it wasn't going to stop raining, but we could, i told my cow friends, we could turn ourselves over and lay with our open backs facing the ground that way when it rained no water would fill us and the farmers wouldn't think we needed milking and we wouldn't have to deal with all the pain!  very satisfied, i flipped over onto my back and continued to sleep.  only, i'm not a cow really and certainly i do not have a mailbox body.  i was back at the milking station within minutes mournfully mooing my existence.

and so my stomach flu has gone on and on.  each day i'm milked of the precious little liquids i am able to take in.  yet i'm afflicted with a sickening sense of hope.  hope it will get better.  in my last post i mentioned starving.  starving! an exaggeration, a haha harbinger of a soon to be awol abdomen. none of it was planned i assure you so let the pity rain, none of it was planned and i'm still sipping on chicken broth and nursing bottles of orange gatorade. it wasn't my fault. one doesn't write about starving metaphorically in one post only to have its shadow glance upon her for four wretched days on purpose. but, there is light this morning. banana and a bit of oatmeal cling fearfully in the bowels of my serpentine cistern, savage-sick stomach.  yes, there is hope still.