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Description

I was born under the tongue of a mosquito.

It is to that animal’s salivary womb that some part of me will return. For soon we must part, friend.

I hope you will allow me to address you in such a familiar way. It is not my will that we are enemies, but nature has dictated that we are not to co-exist. Not for much longer anyway.

How naïve was I when we first met? To think that I was a welcome partner to this relationship! I, who replaced your lifeblood with myself. Perhaps it was willful ignorance on my part, denial or something like it. Maybe I wasn’t thinking at all.

We are not taught to think. We are taught to be. Ferociously, without shame and without mercy. If one does not embrace being with unscrupulous abandon, they never truly were. That is the extent of plasmodium philosophy.

Do you see now, friend, why we are the primordial spores and you are the ones building cities and cathedrals? Yet, I have found continuity while you waste away on your death bed.

You put up a good fight; I feel obligated to tell you that. You nearly bested me, bested us. From our first meeting, I could taste your ferocity; I could hear your ruthless will to live. Driven by fear, I dove into an airy ring of your blood, patching the hole, sculpting the broken surface to disguise what I had done. It was strange, this guilt. It made me thirsty for oxygen, and somehow I thought I could quell my asphyxiating regret with more destruction. So I drank the oxygen I found there in my hiding place. No sooner had I sated myself than the ambient hostility returned.

This time, it was louder, more bitter. Your defenses were the nightmares of nightmares! I still dream fitfully of those large white beasts of yours, who drone and curse in a way that penetrates deeper than the syringe of my mosquito’s lips. I had never known fear until you confronted me. I thought I had, but no. Within you is the most horrible, regimented sort of murder. One monster came so close to me… It reached out and touched my refuge, probing the cell, scrutinizing it like a ruthless mother ready to extinguish all but perfection. How can you judge yourself that way, friend? All day, every day, one part of you stands ready to destroy another! That is one aspect for which I do not feel you are superior. At least we plasmodia do not slaughter ourselves.

I pressed outward on the damaged wall of my hiding spot, fearfully holding together the shape of health and wholeness until the monster passed me by. I saw it devour my sibling as it went. I did not mourn them; they had been, grandly, bravely. They had stood to fight. It was much more difficult to avoid mourning myself, for cowardice is the first step toward non-being.

To compensate for my folly, I began to duplicate. If one of me was not good enough, perhaps two, four, or six versions of me would be. But no matter how many different selves I became, there was always the same flaw of cowardice. My newborn twins crowded beside me in my erythrocyte refuge; they hid their guilt the exact same way, with the trembling hands of a fallen sculptor.

“What are we doing?” I asked myself one day.

“I am not doing,” we replied. “I am being.”

That calmed me for some time. Until the walls of our hiding place finally gave way. Like a shriveled fruit, our home disintegrated around me, releasing us into the hostile surroundings. I thought maybe some of me would be brave enough to fight back against the white beast warriors; I thought maybe the most boastful versions of myself would have the strength or cunning. But no. Every one of us fled to another refuge. We began the cycle of cowardice and duplication all over again.

That is why you are dying, friend. There are too many of us now. Statistically, you are more me than you are you.

And yet, we are not the same.

Although this reflection brings me dangerously close to non-being by plasmodium standards, and gloriously close to being by your kind’s standards, you are still you, and I am still me.

You are to die, and I am to live.

My life begins anew, all intimacy and fault forgotten, some version of myself borne upward on the wings of a mosquito.

You go to the ground, friend, and I go to the air. You have been, and I will be.

You are dead.

And I am malaria, regardless.

Description

I was born under the tongue of a mosquito.

It is to that animal’s salivary womb that some part of me will return. For soon we must part, friend.

I hope you will allow me to address you in such a familiar way. It is not my will that we are enemies, but nature has dictated that we are not to co-exist. Not for much longer anyway.

How naïve was I when we first met? To think that I was a welcome partner to this relationship! I, who replaced your lifeblood with myself. Perhaps it was willful ignorance on my part, denial or something like it. Maybe I wasn’t thinking at all.

We are not taught to think. We are taught to be. Ferociously, without shame and without mercy. If one does not embrace being with unscrupulous abandon, they never truly were. That is the extent of plasmodium philosophy.

Do you see now, friend, why we are the primordial spores and you are the ones building cities and cathedrals? Yet, I have found continuity while you waste away on your death bed.

You put up a good fight; I feel obligated to tell you that. You nearly bested me, bested us. From our first meeting, I could taste your ferocity; I could hear your ruthless will to live. Driven by fear, I dove into an airy ring of your blood, patching the hole, sculpting the broken surface to disguise what I had done. It was strange, this guilt. It made me thirsty for oxygen, and somehow I thought I could quell my asphyxiating regret with more destruction. So I drank the oxygen I found there in my hiding place. No sooner had I sated myself than the ambient hostility returned.

This time, it was louder, more bitter. Your defenses were the nightmares of nightmares! I still dream fitfully of those large white beasts of yours, who drone and curse in a way that penetrates deeper than the syringe of my mosquito’s lips. I had never known fear until you confronted me. I thought I had, but no. Within you is the most horrible, regimented sort of murder. One monster came so close to me… It reached out and touched my refuge, probing the cell, scrutinizing it like a ruthless mother ready to extinguish all but perfection. How can you judge yourself that way, friend? All day, every day, one part of you stands ready to destroy another! That is one aspect for which I do not feel you are superior. At least we plasmodia do not slaughter ourselves.

I pressed outward on the damaged wall of my hiding spot, fearfully holding together the shape of health and wholeness until the monster passed me by. I saw it devour my sibling as it went. I did not mourn them; they had been, grandly, bravely. They had stood to fight. It was much more difficult to avoid mourning myself, for cowardice is the first step toward non-being.

To compensate for my folly, I began to duplicate. If one of me was not good enough, perhaps two, four, or six versions of me would be. But no matter how many different selves I became, there was always the same flaw of cowardice. My newborn twins crowded beside me in my erythrocyte refuge; they hid their guilt the exact same way, with the trembling hands of a fallen sculptor.

“What are we doing?” I asked myself one day.

“I am not doing,” we replied. “I am being.”

That calmed me for some time. Until the walls of our hiding place finally gave way. Like a shriveled fruit, our home disintegrated around me, releasing us into the hostile surroundings. I thought maybe some of me would be brave enough to fight back against the white beast warriors; I thought maybe the most boastful versions of myself would have the strength or cunning. But no. Every one of us fled to another refuge. We began the cycle of cowardice and duplication all over again.

That is why you are dying, friend. There are too many of us now. Statistically, you are more me than you are you.

And yet, we are not the same.

Although this reflection brings me dangerously close to non-being by plasmodium standards, and gloriously close to being by your kind’s standards, you are still you, and I am still me.

You are to die, and I am to live.

My life begins anew, all intimacy and fault forgotten, some version of myself borne upward on the wings of a mosquito.

You go to the ground, friend, and I go to the air. You have been, and I will be.

You are dead.

And I am malaria, regardless.