If you and your fever

existed in the European 

Middle Ages,

you would have ingested 

a dose of lapis lazuli pigment 

to cure your ailment. 

That’s how the thinking went.

Oh you’d better get ready 

for an exorcism 

if you perspired 

in ancient Mesopotamia. 

What if you lived 

with a Roman Empire fever 

in a past life?

You must have pleased the deities 

who made you sick

by placing amulets 

in the Temple of Febris. 

In a young February morning,

you rush your 100°F self

under bloodstained clouds

to the CVS opening its jaw

doors at 5th and Lincoln

across from Golden Gate Park’s 

cypress tree wall.

You stumble in your sweltering skin

down aisle 3. Before a blur

of pill bottles, you blurt out

where the hell is the Tylenol 

like a 9th-century man with a fever like you

wondering where his lapis lazuli

went hiding.

Published in Monetized Happiness (American Poetry Systems, 2025)