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When a Cold Brings me Down
I’m not sure if it’s irony or bad luck. The day after I write a poem talking about the change in air quality in Beijing, I get a cold.
Summer’s slowly ending. Nights are no longer the nasty, humid 90 degrees they usually are. They’re a more pleasant 65 degrees these days. So I decided I’d leave my air conditioner off for once this summer and get some sleep. I’d been sneezing a lot during the day and thought a little bit of fresh air might do my body some good.
Instead, I woke up with a nose so clogged I couldn’t breathe. If I wasn’t blowing my nose, I was plugging it up to keep it from dripping. There was no middle-ground. I went through two and a half tissue boxes in two days. And when I think it’s all done, a nasty cough shows up on the third day.
And don’t get me started about the drugs. If they didn’t keep me awake, they knocked me out. I’d even go as far as to say it feels like the pills are making me sicker. So I’ve had little to no drugs.
Just like that. Five days of writing gone.
Every second I could’ve been writing a new poem, I’m reaching for tissues. Instead of scratching my head for a good headline, I’m rubbing my nose cause it hurts from blowing it so much. Instead of pacing around my apartment trying to figure out if I should add this detail or not, I’m pacing cause that’s the only…
