Plate of the Plague: A Microbial Tango with the Microscopic World
As I lay here in the night, with the devilish blue light twinging against my aching eyes, I feel a great heat emanating from my forever partner. I hear a deep sigh rattle out of him, and I feel the movement of his body as he reaches for tissue, one after another. He is incapacitated. Stuck and melodramatic in my eyes. I cannot understand it. He calls it the "Man Flu." What makes it any more different if a man has it versus a woman? I have gone through various lengths, stretching my head as if it were malleable putty, just so I may be able to wrap my mind around it. Alas, I am just as incapacitated as he. Stuck. I do not understand this illness. All around my feet, it circles—and then it sits. Like an obedient dog, it begs the question from me: Do men feel illness worse than women? It came as soon as it went. Guilt. I cannot imagine such theatrics from something as mild as a head cold or a sniffle. I bleed every month. My barren uterus twists its cruel face at me and pangs m...