He Calls Himself M.E.
I live inside a house, a house that has no door. My captor is an illness, with the build and the might of a minotaur.
His name is Myalgic Encephalomyelitis. He calls himself M.E.—because once he has found you, your own myself goes missing. He takes away your me.
He keeps me locked in shadow. He lays himself on top of me. I cry out.
He crushes a filthy palm against my tongue. I try to kick. He pins my limbs.
I am buried under the weight of him. Gnats roam his pelt. They pinch my skin. I want only not to feel.
At night I hear the other women, their stifled howls in other rooms, rooms I cannot reach. Down halls built labyrinthine, his footfall thuds like mallets.
M.E. has henchmen, naturally. They call on me all hours. Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, he goes by the name of POTS. His stride is long, his cloak a wing. It seems to hum and whir.
He waves his arms. His sleeves flip back: fine-boned wrists, a cloud of black. Tiny red-eyed vampire bats. They flap in a fury against my ribs. Fanging for blood—before it pumps the heart, before it sates the brain.
I reach for a wall, brace myself, fall into a crouch. POTS laughs. He pokes my shoulder. I tip right over. I am wan. I gulp for breath. POTS whistles high and tight.
His bats rise. They’re gone. I can’t stand up.
A phantom flutter bites into my breast. Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis is fat as a slug. He blinks real slow, like a man who can’t be bothered.
Outside, the sun bakes the sky—except I wouldn’t know. Hashi controls the thermostat. My room is brisk as January.
I tuck my comforter under my feet, my hips, my forearms, I pull it to my chin.
No matter.
Hashi is here, greasy strands slicked across his scalp. He gives the blanket one small tug—he’s got hold of my fingers, hold of my toes. Their tips take on a glacier’s sheen. A chill rolls into the all of me.
On his way out, Hashi snaps off a fistful of my hair. He lets it drop.
Whatever. He doesn’t care. Adrenal Fatigue used to row crew. She sports collegiate sweats—exclusively.
Nights she nudges me awake. Every two hours, maybe three. Mornings, a paper bag gets crammed over my head.
If she’s feeling punchy, she might just cut two eye holes. Mostly, I stare at empty brown. This, she says, builds stamina.
Either way, I’m never not exhausted.
By five, she lets me take it off. She’s not so bad then, really. She tells lewd jokes. She pets the cat. She teaches Texas Hold'em.
At nine, she slaps on pounds of lard. My thighs, my butt, my upper arms. She likes her gals chunked up.
I tell her I want the skinny back.
She laughs. Vanity? You think you’re allowed that? M.E. has three teen daughters: Leaky Gut, Gut Dysbiosis, Candidiasis. Big into arts and crafts, my intestines their pet project.
The eldest likes to scrapbook, her scissors sting like flame. She has me buckled over, weeping for the pain.
The middle one inflates my tummy: a balloon she papier-mâchés. I am relegated to elastic loungewear waists.
And the youngest with her bedazzler! Dime-store rhinestones geyser out my bowels.
I’ve culled my diet to five stewed foods. I gorge on lactoferments. Regardless.
My stomach lining is macramé, my intestinal wall is paper lace. Each snowflake the sisters cut, another toxin in my blood stream, another nutrient gone to waste. Epstein Barr wears Tony Lamas. He's always watching. The mean is in his eyes.
He watches for when I get busy, he watches for when I show joy, he watches most of all for when I carpe the damn diem, and that is when he strikes.
He slams me against the door frame. He kicks me to the floor. I’m curled at his feet, I’m begging: please, not this time, no, I didn’t mean to, really.
He lights an American Spirit. He flicks the match head at my face. I shut my eyes. He laughs. The heels of his cowboy boots click away.
The air is coarse with tobacco, my mind all soot and blur. I cannot move. I cry three days.
It’s two weeks before being alive feels kind of okay. My immune system was once a vision, her muscles lean and coiled. She roared into battle, her arrows thrummed. She never knew a loss.
Twelve years she has hunted M.E.’s henchmen, she has chased his band of miscreants—Borna, Parvo, Entero; Chlamydia Pneumonia and Mycoplasma; Ehrlichiosis, Humanes Herpes 6.
She has thrown herself on M.E.’s back, she has stabbed his sides, she has pierced his neck. For what?
She has been flung against walls, she has broken three ribs, she has lost the skin off her knuckles.
She is hunkered in a corner now, barely aware who’s in the room or whom she’s supposed to throttle—maybe she’s the one who started it, maybe she’s what’s wrong, she’s why I’m still here?
She pounds her temples. She tears her gnarled hair. She rakes her arms red.
Take that, you, she says.
She lives in a house, a house with no door. Her captor has the build of a minotaur.














