– Lea Deschenes Whatever’s developing is likely to remain sealed below the skin’s great projection screen until it’s finally done marinating in chemicals that will either decipher it as the amazing answer to a litany of unasked questions or expose it as yet another reminder of that time I jackknifed the tractor while backing-up a load of hay and sliced the tubeless tire […]
Once, it was glorious — lithe, flowing, carnal, capricious. So effortless, moving with abandon and finding fault with hips and lips and hair and thighs now mourned. Watching through eyelid slits as charts become tomes of words and terms and treatments that are hard to bear, but for the alternative. Contemporaries arm themselves with creams and steams and fillers to smooth grin crinkles, instead of saline streambeds and […]
I am sick. Not the dying sick, but the perpetually sick, the we-can-help-you-manage-your-pain-but-we-can’t-cure-you sick. I need a lot of bloodwork and my phlebotomist calls me Momma. But I never felt that primal need some other women have, the urge to grow children inside and deliver them to the world. I am a Teacher, and a good one. I help dry tears and give advice and attend youth sporting […]
As the doctor exits the exam room she reaches for my hand. I pull her entire body onto my lap as she continues to stare at the Gastrointestinal Diagram like it’s a map of the stars, searching for constellations, seeing only organs, glands and tissues. “Do I need my liver to live?” I stare at her, feel her sit bones press into my quivering quads, her hands interlocking around my […]
Melancholy Hyperbole 