I had a dream

Last night I had a dream that a tribe of maggots was living in my esophagus. Clinging to my uvula. I could feel them squirm each time I opened my mouth to speak. In this dream, a few months earlier I’d had a productive could that yielded mysterious small, white globules — I’d later realize those were the precursor to my maggot infestation.

When it occurred to me that the clumpy sensation clogging my throat was, in fact, a parasite; that my worst fear had become reality, I began to wail, and wail, and wail. I could not stop crying, but no one seemed to care. Everywhere I went, I wailed with the hope that someone would show even a hint of sympathy. I begged my mother to take me to a doctor — but she was apathetic. Eventually she took me to see a doctor — they were apathetic as well. We sat for what felt like hours in the waiting room. I wailed the whole time, but to no avail. Every time I opened my mouth I could feel the maggots back there, and the trauma from speaking out became too much to bear, too painful to justify uttering another cry. So I was silent.

No one had been receptive to my expressions of pain, so I stifled them and told myself the pain wasn’t there. My pain was irrelevant. My voice was irrelevant too. Rather, it was infected, oozing. Society let the wound fester.