I met Lizzie when I was seven. If you’d told me then that 21 years later we’d be sat on my living room floor talking about whether she’ll ever get to try naan bread, I’d have been very confused. Firstly, it’s because we grew up on the Isle of Wight and naan had yet to cross the Solent in the 90s. Secondly, what we were talking about wasn’t naan bread at all.
Lizzie is getting married this year. She’s been with her fiancé for seven years. It’ll be a small gathering without any bridesmaids as otherwise there’d be no-one sat down. I’d like to start by stating she does want to get married. This conversation wasn’t so much a cry for help as a dawning realisation.…
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Mags leaned over the dessert case in the truck stop diner and sang out, “Look what they got today!” Her thick palms splayed atop the long case, wedding ring sparkling in the spotlights. Red flowery blouse curtained three long shelves of thick gooey fudginess and dripping fruitiness and stiff creaminess.
Deb hung back by the hostess podium, avoiding the case. She tried to block what Mags was saying, stop her mind from going into details. She had to be strong, focused. Her mission tonight ran counter to their standard Monday-night mission. But she had not told this to her friend and co-conspirator.
Mags heaved herself up and turned to face Deb, her full weight looking like an unmade bed. She brushed greying strands away from her face.…
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Three days after I stopped coughing,
I got dressed to leave the house.
Put on my oldest sneakers
Certain they’d be burned at the end of the night
Along with every other surface exposed to the virus.
Your scrubs are on inside out,
My wife said.
Prepared with full battle regalia:
Bonnet, face shield, N95 with another outer mask
Goretex suit, shoe covers, two pairs of gloves
All hopes pinned on extra layers of skin
Keeping bad things out and good things in.
Don’t take your gear off under any circumstances,
I instructed my team. We spent
13 hours afraid to drink water.
Sweat soaked, I stepped into rooms
To get phone numbers, call loved ones
Yellow gowns, blue tarps, red blood
Are all I see of those first shifts
We remember not knowing how this will end
And we don’t want to go back.…
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I walk every afternoon. I have been doing this since my heart surgery. “The River Kwai March” runs through my head, and I walk all around my suburban neighborhood to its marching tempo.
I was about nine or ten years old when my father took me to see “The Bridge on the River Kwai.” That movie made a lasting impression on me. Even today, at age seventy, emotions will wash over me whenever I hear the whistling of that song from the soundtrack. It opens the movie with World War II prisoners in a Japanese camp returning from a day of forced labor whistling as they march. They show a defiant spirit against the Japanese, against death. An orchestra joins in as if it supports their spirited dignity.…
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Bill closed his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and inhaled deeply. Ah! Being around Carol was almost like smoking. Her thick hair carried an aura of cigarette smoke.
“Do you believe this shit?” Carol shook the newspaper in disgust.
“What’s that?” Keep her talking. Keep her here. God, for a cigarette.
“This guy won some lottery back east. In Jersey. No, in whatever. He gave it away. Most of it. Just gave it away!”
“It happens.” She’d let him have one. Smokers love moochers. Mooching means it’s futile to quit.
“Not in my lifetime.” She stood and began wadding the paper into a stack.
“I know a fellow,” Bill said as he reached around to the tiny refrigerator and pulled out two bottles of water.…
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A tarmac arrowhead released from between the trees –
shot forward with each step. Feet that echo,
scream in hollow bursts of three, are close behind.
The asphalt river is banked with hands that claw from their soil beds,
gnarled fingers twist in agony at their shed skin
lying in the road, red fish like a million paper cuts.
Tonight a car comes around the bend up ahead.
The lights slash at the darkness, flaxen wounds like two gateways to heaven.
I choose neither and it growls deep in its engine,
illuminating blood and fur before it buries itself in the burrow of black behind me.
I’m wading through waist-deep water now, anchor limbs screaming
‘you can’t run, not towards blood that’s already dried’.
A dead deer.…
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Wake up. Turn on your cell. Get pelted with the handful of phone calls you missed. Return one. The person who answers doesn’t want to deliver the news. You know what the person will say. The number of calls and who made them tipped you off. Still need to hear it. Your mother died of a heart attack. No surprise. She’d been throwing her health away with both hands, physical, emotional, mental, most of your life. Hang up. Microburst of tears. You’re not sure why you’re crying. Stop. Not all mothers deserve to be mourned. Yours is one of these. Call your husband. Ask him to tell your son later.
Hit the shower. You’ve got a job to get to. Your mother dying isn’t a tragedy.…
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