just as I am - and do not wish to be

Tuesday morning I removed myself from the duvet lair bright and early, feeling unusually alert and refreshed. It was only later in the day that I started to suffer for this foolhardiness, as I became a totally shattered wreck, and I’m still struggling – four and a half days later - to regain my usual familiarly limited reserves of stamina.

Headaches, giddiness, muscular pains and spasms, tenderness in armpits and under the chin, a bruised feeling around the ribcage alongside a sore throat and roof of the mouth, such have been the rewards for my carelessness.

To be perfectly honest, I suspect the ‘early morning’ was simply the carelessly thrown match landing on a tinder pile which would have self-combusted sooner or later.

Another bout of perspiration, suddenly oozing from forehead, chest and arms, seems to prefigure a renewed surge of shattered exhaustion. Frustration swiftly follows as I teeter on the brink of despair, feebly yielding to a flow of tears; a plenitude of gnawing aches destroys any semblance of composure.