I get into the shower, and I start to cough. I feel like I’ve been sick for days. 

I turn my back on the water, and feel it warm my spine and my ribs, as it beats down on me. Hot rain. Cool acid. 

I cough, and I cough up snot. Big ropes of the stuff, sticky and runny and long. I feel so sick, so tired, so heavy. 

I cough and I cough. My lungs rattle like old metal doors in a storm. 

I cough, and I cough up goldfish. Big, fat little bastards, shiny as the sun. I can feel their tails, tickling my trachea as they climb upstream through my throat, and out onto the shower floor. They squirm around my feet, and swim off down the drain. Big, sad-eyed goldfish, floating away. Tumbling out through my lips, and off down the drain.

I feel terrible. My head feels like a cracked piñata. 

I cough, and I cough, and I cough, and I feel a kitchen sink start to rise up in me, its facet dragging on me inside, its taps spinning around as I heave it up out of me. It crash out past my lips and to the shower floor in a heap of sticky metals. I kick it with a naked toe, and the metal degrades, turns to rust, washes away like dried blood in a flow of warm water.

I feel fucking sick.

I cough a bit more, and I lose two ducks, a gallon of milk, ten tin toy cars, a dozen plastic army soldiers, and two-fifths of my soul. 

The warm water washes it all away.