The Gory Details
She could always list them: dipso husband, daughter hearing voices, an addict son. She’d snap off pieces of raw carrot and shrug, munching. “I can’t complain. They didn’t happen all at once.” She’d light up. And cough. But no one nicer on a check-out line. Or dancing a tea bag in and out of hot water. Or taking the blame each time her daughter screamed at the wall. Or telling her son he was okay, while she breathed her last smoke in the day room at Astoria Hospital. “I’ll spare you the gory details.” She looked away. Her right lung removed, a pink crescent scar around her shoulder blade she didn’t want to see in any mirror. The oxygen tube clipped to the cartilage dividing one nostril from another. An invisible fume traveling into her left life. That hover in the recovery room nothing but the future collecting—impatient, uneasy as the son and daughter around her bed. “You’ll have to get some milk before I get home.” A vaporous prong already descending into her open mouth beginning to close.