She did not slice the bandage snugged about the numb toe
but tickled an end open to begin the unwinding. She
unwound the gauze slowly as she turned her head
to see where the cloth stuck to itself and how to cut it.
Vit
il
I go.
I loved quilts until I became one.
the most terrible pain known to man,
trigeminal neuralgia
ricochets around my face, pulsing
electric-shocks. My doctor advises
cutting the nerve in my cheek, the only hope
of stopping the torture. He mentions
some patients consider
suicide. My husband has just revealed
In early morning appointments,
the doctor’s coat reeks of cigarettes
as he moves closer,
says “Scoot down,”
inserts the probe.
They want me to want my eggs
in case the treatment takes them—
to hold fast to the dream of a child
with my dimples and dark eyes.
In the springtime, a zombie showed up,
breaking down our door and biting me.
Friends and neighbors asked questions,
not daring to come near,
leaving flowers, candles, baked goods
on our crooked stoop.
Small birds teeter
on the wires by the feedstore.
Crows scatter broken seedpods
beneath the streetlight.
Flowering weeds crowd the dusty sidewalk,
sickly yellow or red as blood.
She’d moved west to Seattle; by phone
we compare treatments, numbers,
chances.
Hanging on, she says: we are survivors.
Occasionally it sounds like
a cathedral tower full of bells
but usually it’s more like the last
scatter of cicadas at the end of summer,
an almost pleasant buzz and whirr,
The eradication of non-native Fallopia japonica,
for all intents and purposes, must be considered a
practical impossibility. The aggressive nature of the
plant, combined with the similarly harmful side effects
of the removal options, renders it one of the most
devastating blights facing modern homeowners today.
Everything’s gone silent
as though a group of doctors has entered
the children’s ward.
Drone of water vehicles stowed,
a couple strolls the long edge of conversation.
Waves, like fear, have subsided—
only their small breaths remain.
There was the bed bent in half,
the needle in the wrist,
the crack of bathroom light under the door.
Your father tried to sleep in the hospital cot
When I thought I might die,
not eventually, but very
soon, I treated me more kindly,
as if I were my own child,
the girl I was, and the woman
I am, all melded
© 2024 Pulse - Voices from the Heart of Medicine, Inc. All rights reserved.
