After my first day on medicine clinic, my head was spinning like a top. I couldn't believe how disorganized the modern American hospital could actually be. If anyone had told me, "dear, when you finally become a doctor, your colleagues will constantly be trying to kill your patients, and you'll have your hands full trying to stop them from practicing medicine," I would have just laughed nervously and moved on.
Yet, here I was.
Nothing could have prepared me for the carnage I was witnessing, and not just in terms of my coworkers being lazy, stupid, and sometimes downright malevolent....
The car stalled. The roads were half washed out and the rain pounded like a blacksmith's hammer on the hood. The storms began a few days ago, but before that it had been a dry summer. After the first downpour, people started smiling and stopped fanning their faces. Life strained under the drops in vegetable and flower gardens.
After the first whole nights of dark heavy clouds, the constant grumble of thunder, people were still trying to be positive. Good for the forests, dry as tinder, they'd say. The river was too low anyway.
After a week and flooded basements,...
Malcolm's coo became a cry.
The child peeked into the cardboard box, vexation clearly etched etched upon his face. "What's the matter, little bird?" he asked, reaching down to stroke the wounded pigeon. His mother had warned him to stay away, that sometimes birds would bite and a wild bird like Malcolm could carry diseases. He didn't care. He wanted to stroke his back feathers, far enough back that the bird's beak couldn't reach his pudgey fingers... just in case.
"David! Stay away from that bird!" his mother called.
The boy yanked his finger back just as the pigeon lunged...
It wasn't so bad, the cancer, eating me from the inside out. Started with headaches, diagnoses, hopes and dreams dashed like fine china on the asphalt. My hands shaking, pillow wet in the morning, children gripping me, knowing without words that life was changing. Daddy is dying, mommy said. Like grandma. No, daddy isn't going to heaven. There is no heaven. Only the great void. Its nothing to be afraid of Sofie. Daddy loves you. More doctors and pills, and then pain and then...nothing. The desire to life squashed like a grape on the supermarket floor. Life itself spinning, a...
She was the most delicate girl in town. Small, pixieish, with willowy limbs and and small features placed evenly on her round face. She dressed delicately, too, with long, floaty skirts and light fabrics such as cotton and lace. She seemed to float when she walked, flicking her skirts and jumping lightly, like a fawn. But her eyes were, well, disturbing. electric green, with long, slit, vertical pupils, like a cat's. I wondered who she was, and where she came from. But one day, she just, dissapeared. Not a trace of her was found. one day, they found her at...
Captive. Surrounded by watr, the woman could not breathe, could not fight, could not even open her eyes. Her waist was bound and her feet were weighted and she was sinking. Soon to be erased.
The man in the boat had asked her one last question before he rolled her out. Now, sinking like a parachuter, she did not think about her little boy at home, or her parents (they would be so sad), or all the things she would leave behind. No. Her last moments, the last grains of sand in her proverbial hourglass, and Mari was thinking about...
I held it at arm's length. The would seemed to shake as I looked over the orb. My thoughts started to take a turn for the worse. I invision the sky grew dark and I alone in a vast ocean the orb was what I think was the sun storm clouds started to gather and the sea became rougher, I held the orb there still at arms length, then without warning the world went dark and the noise of the waves left me to be alone still with the orb.
We are there. We are in the shadows, in the gaps, in the spaces between words. We are in every moment where you pull away, where discretion replaces narrative, we are there.
We are there in the knowledge that you do not write all things that happen, we are there, waiting in the wings, filling in the gaps, in the spaces.
You did not write us - you never write us, nobody writes us (and who would read us, who would read every banal moment, every second, what soul could stand the painful inevitability of one moment following the next...
Raisins are evil. They just don't belong... anywhere really. They're grapes that couldn't make it and have a second chance as rai-sins... that's right. Sins. You read it right. You have to admit that it's pretty strange that sins is right there in raisins. They're evil little wanna bes that wreak havok on all things good and wholesome. Cinnamon buns for instance. What's worse in a cinnamon bun than raisins? Nothing! Raisins are the poops of the fruit world! And they end up in your cinnamon bun like little turds. Little fruit turds that have to be picked around and...
It started as a joke.
Ralph was one of the few people at the camp who had a vehicle, who had a vehicle that was heavy enough to roll through the massive amounts of snow that often fell here over the course of an entire winter, and whose vehicle was actually fit enough to start on a cold morning.
Sally had a sled. She had a sled and a length of rope, and one day thought that it would be amusing to tie the length of rope to Ralph's bumper and let Ralph take her for a ride. Though Ralph...