What if Poetry was a Virus?

What if poetry was a virus?
Imagine contagious words
spread through the air,
so as I breathe
the rhyme is drawn in to me
bringing with it fever.
Then line by line by line
poetry multiplies through my cells,
verse by verse by verse
my nerve endings are set aflame
and poem by poem by poem
I burn all night.

Early next morning my fever broke,
I snapped awake covered
in a sheen of sweat like morning dew.
Shaking myself like a dog
my fever now a dying ember
my hands scrambled for poetry.
Reading deeply
breathing deeply,
hoping to catch
poetry again.