Select Work, 2009 Edition
Down the Rabbit Hole
Kimberly Burton
Don't be afraid
To go chasing after white rabbits,
Even if they lead you wandering into dark holes.
It is often a shadowy chasm
That takes you to new places
Where excitement lingers
Waiting like the Cheshire Cat
For you to either capture it
Or to instantly disappear.
Be persistent; look high and low—
Up at trees in the forest,
Under tables at tea parties—
For what you've been pursuing.
But don’t forget to enjoy
The stops on your quest.
Make time for a chat with the Tweedles,
A song with the flowers,
Contemplation of a caterpillar's riddles.
But be careful not to offend
By counting them as inferior
To what you've been following.
Be cautious of whom you tell.
You never know who may want
To chop off your head,
Disturb your dreams,
Or go rabbit hunting.
And in the end, if what you're seeking
Doesn't turn out as you expected—
Perhaps a brown hare—
Make sure to have a cushion below the clouds,
A safe place outside of Wonderland
To dream.
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Stubs
Elizabeth Harris
Aside from the fact that my legs are lopped off at the knees,
I’m a fairly attractive man.
You wouldn’t notice the absence of my shins
if I was sitting at a linen-shrouded table.
Or lying in bed, with covers to my chin
and a pillow substituting for my phantom limbs.
Or if a countertop concealed my physique
from the waist-down.
But you don’t see the ripple of my biceps
beneath the cotton-spandex blend.
You don’t smell my after-shave.
All you notice is gangrene
and stubs.
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Girls at Eighteen
Hannah Boyd
Girls at eighteen,
Stepping forward
Out of tea party and dress-up days
Into the world of responsibilities.
Driving to a new place to call home,
Away from Mommy and Daddy,
Where decisions must be made
Day by day, big and small.
While asleep,
Dreaming of the future that awaits them:
Hopes of a family and career,
With a white picket fence around the perfect home.
While awake,
Stressing about how to make the dreams reality,
Trying to maintain a social life and relationships,
Not forgetting the importance of schoolwork.
A never-ending search
To discover who they are and where they belong
After they depart from the days of dress-up and tea parties
Into the world of responsibilities.
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Gaze of a Different Kind
Sarah Smith
As she glared at the sunshine outside the window of room 104, Francis Morton contemplated possibly refusing her medication again. She was settled in the orthopedically approved nursing home wheelchair with a typical scowl crinkling her face. When she actually released the glower, which was seldom, she had very few wrinkles for a woman pushing eighty. Perhaps the iron gray knot mercilessly wrought to the top of her head pulled her severe face taut. Whatever the reason, the sparse wrinkles present on her glaring countenance were merely frown lines and crow’s feet.
If I refuse my pills maybe they’ll move me out of here…anything will be better than this…
“This” was Edith. Edith was the newest occupant of Room 104. Although she met her less than a day ago, Francis Morton had already formed a solid opinion of her new roommate. Putting it delicately was to say that she was a little eccentric. Mostly, Francis just thought she was loony. Among her tamer traits, Edith apparently had a habit of walking and talking in her sleep, so precautionary guard rails were in place to keep her confined to her bed. Currently Edith was spewing forth a steady stream of nonsense under her breath involving wheelbarrows, mailmen, and single malt whiskey—clearly finding it very funny as she chortled away her afternoon nap.
Wrapped snugly in a fluffy sage afghan, Francis was still glaring from her wheelchair by the screened window. She turned her attention back outside where the fully blooming irises in their waves of lavender glory were hailing in the springtime. Though their enamoring scent was wafting deliciously and filling the room, Francis glowered at their gaily swaying heads before lowering her gaze back to her knitting. Unfortunately, the tremors in her hands were growing more violent, so the needles clashed together and tangled the yarn.
“Dern these dagum shakes, spoilin’ my work,” she grumbled as the project fell from her gnarled hands to the floor. Unable to lift herself from the chair or lean forward enough to reach it, Francis was in quite a fix. She was momentarily distracted from her predicament as Edith’s monologue suddenly became explosive.
“Henry,” she beckoned. “Henry, you hush up!”
Francis soon found that silencing Henry was a usual dream of her roommate’s—although contrary to first assumption, Henry was not Edith’s husband. Henry happened to be her dearly departed poodle. He had been dead and gone for some years now but nearly every time Edith would drift into the haze of an afternoon nap that old dog resurrected himself and commenced to barking. Apparently the poor old woman preferred the silent version of Henry, so in between her sleep walking and other pain-killer induced fancies her goal was to keep the pup quiet.
Still trapped in her wheelchair, Francis stared in disgust as she slowly came to the annoying realization that soon she would need to relieve herself. Since the slow decline in her health had confined her to bed rest she had ventured several times to make the journey to the toilet on her own. All of said attempts had ended in her lying stranded on the floor until an attendant could come scold her like a child and tuck her back in bed. Twice she had badly broken her wrist and another topple had resulted in a fractured hip. Unwilling to risk more injuries, Francis reluctantly reached for her buzzer when she heard, over Edith’s steady flow of nonsense (now about the best burger she had ever tasted) a knock at the door.
The smiling face of her eldest granddaughter poked around the corner, followed by her lovely figure gliding across the room to administer a hug.
“How are you doing today, Gran?” she asked, setting down her purse and car keys. Francis’ face distorted with yearning as Jen leaned nimbly over, easily snatched up the stranded knitting and pulled up a seat opposite her grandmother’s wheelchair.
“How do you think I’m doing, Jen?”
“Gran, are you still not happy here? If you’re mad about the nurses again—”
“It ain’t all the nurses, it’s just them male ones. It ain’t fittin’. An’ on top of that, one of them dern fools took all my candy. That warn’t no cheap stuff neither.”
“Gran, you know you can’t have candy because of your diabetes, and your other health problems. How about I go get you some sugar free candy?”
“That stuff’s downright terrible, and you know it. And about these dern male nurses. T’other day one of ‘em came in here and tried takin’ off my slippers while I was a-sleepin’. I tell you what, I let that rascal have it. I cursed him up one side and down the other.”
“Oh, Gran. He was just trying to check the circulation in your feet.”
“Well, I don’t care. He shouldn’ta snuck up on me like that while I was restin’.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.” The young woman possessed a tone that suggested the finality of the matter, and Francis just scowled in discontent.
“Anyway Gran, I noticed you have a new roommate. That’ll be nice to have someone to talk to.”
The disgruntled grandmother was about to express her distinct distaste for her new, very vocal compatriot. But the words didn’t have a chance to leave her pursed and frowning lips. Edith had appeared suddenly beside them and was happily peering out the window at the glorious spring day.
Now that she wasn’t confined to a hospital bed, Edith’s physique could be clearly observed. Previously Francis had made her out to be sickly and frail with little strength to do much of anything. Now though, she could see where the slim but strong leanness had been mistaken for ill health. Edith wore a long cotton gown with small ruffles on the sleeves and hem. The faded, pale green hue offset the near translucency of her skin. Blue veins spidered their way up her hands and arms and crept across her temples into the sparse, snowy whiteness of her straggly hair. She did seem a little pitiful. But if she was, Edith didn’t take notice of it. She merely smiled absently and searched the room for some other form of entertainment.
She must have practically vaulted right outta that bed to get over them rails. Francis marveled at her roommate’s agility. But she couldn’t ponder Edith’s escape for long because the aptly nimble old woman was now petitioning Jen to turn around and look over her shoulder.
“Look…look right there. Watch out!” She pointed. “You see? There’s a devil up there on top of the cabinet. He’s ‘bout to jump on your back. He’s gonna take you for a ride!” she continued gleefully.
The young woman whom she had been addressing simply gaped back at her with a mixture of astonishment and pity. In fact, after the initial shock had worn off, the only expression present on Jen’s face was sympathy in the most condescending sense of the word. She looked at the blathering lady as if she were a small sickly child being abandoned by her parents. However, Edith paid no heed to the patronizing change in expression on the girl’s face. She was happily carrying on an animated conversation with the flowered bedspread next to Francis. Or rather, she was addressing someone named Walter who had apparently forgotten his coat at the barber shop yet again and should hurry-back-to-get-it-before-some-no-good-ruffian-walked-off-with-it. Consequently, Walter must have followed orders and set off for the barber’s because Edith then turned again to Francis.
“You know, I was walking down that hall yesterday and I saw a man with glasses and a white coat slink up next to the dinner cart and put some kind of poison in the food. I did! I saw it!”
She kept going on about what the man looked like and how he was poisoning everybody when Jen asked her grandmother, “Gran do you think we should ask someone about that?”
“Well, Jen I don’t kno—”
“And just when he was about to put something in my cup of chocolate pudding a struttin’ little penguin with a bow tie came walking up and knocked that poison right out of his hands. He saved me.”
“No. No, I don’t think we have anything to worry about,” Francis commented.
Francis and her granddaughter continued to observe the mumbling Edith wander about the room, picking up a comb here, a picture frame there, marveling over each one. Occasionally, she’d converse with the pair of women about her love of croquet, and then begin to upbraid the bedpost for sneaking cookies before dinner. In her blissfully altered state of reality she warmly visited with friends of long past; caressed her sleeping children; perched upon her grandfather’s knee and renewed her vows of love and commitment with her husband. She even drove a car for the first time, ice-skated with a young beau, and attended her first opera.
The faces of the two observers by the window both depicted sympathy, but of starkly different kinds. The youthful, rosy blush of Jen’s face blanched slightly with some unforeseen dread. She was witnessing Time and Age without any hope for happiness. The pity was tinged with a slight horror as she saw what she perceived to be the inevitable. She swallowed the egg-sized lump in her throat and recomposed her features to reflect mild pathos.
Francis, however, possessed a gaze of a different kind. Her features softened to a warm blend of compassion and longing. The transformation on the severity of her face produced an altogether pleasing effect. Her eyes reflected not the bleak destruction of the human mind, but rather Francis saw Edith’s disconnection from a harsh reality. From her confining chair Francis looked at her roommate as if she could fly to the moon and enjoy the freedom from that dreaded weight of gravity pressing down.
And she probably can fly, Francis thought. In fact she’ll just take a trip to the skies for the afternoon and leave me here by this window.
Edith was now inspecting a potted plant by the window when a small robin flitted lightly to the sill.
“Well, hello there, little fellow,” Edith crooned. “Are you enjoying the lovely day? I think I’ll join you.”
And with that she made an about-face and shuffled towards the door. Upon reaching it, she turned over her shoulder, leaned on the frame and inquired of the two viewers, “Have you seen Henry? My dog? I think he wandered off again. He does that so often. I just can’t think of where he’s gone—Wait…I hear him barking. Henry! You come back here!” She swung around and dashed into the hall, chasing Henry through the nursing home.
“That poor, poor woman,” Jen finally whispered. “How awful it must be.”
“No,” Francis said. “No, Jen. She’s content—that’s not awful at all.”
And the frail grandmother stared at the now vacant doorway for a long time before reclining her head and closing her eyes. The faintest of smiles gently played at the corners of her lips. When she opened her eyes again, it was to see her granddaughter feebly smiling through a fresh stream of tears.
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Statistic
Elizabeth Harris
Flopping down on my bed, I popped open the bottle of aspirin and stared at its contents. There looked to be about thirty-five to forty pills still in the bottle. What would happen if I emptied them all out? I thought. Surely it would kill me…maybe half the bottle would be better. What if I took fifteen? If I only take fifteen, I’ll just get sick. It will be just enough to scare everyone. Somebody will find me before I get too sick. Nobody leaves me alone long enough to let me die. Besides, too many kids kill themselves today for stupid reasons; I don’t want to be just like every other problem child. I deserve to be different. I’m smarter than that—I know when to stop. It takes a lot of thought to calculate just where that line between sickness and death is, and I know I can do it. I poured a stack of pills into my hand, counting them slowly. I counted out seventeen, the same number as my age. After staring at the simple, unassuming white tablets, I dumped them back into their container.
My age isn’t the right number, that’s too cliché. No… I should probably take one for every problem currently plaguing me; now that’s creative. No one will understand that system. Even better: the worse the problem, the more pills I’ll take. Whenever they find me and fuss over me for a while, I’ll explain everything to them. Maybe then they’ll understand the life they’re forcing me to live. I started with my family. One pill for the comment my dad made about young marriages being stupid, another three for the way my mother made me feel about having the door to my room closed when my boyfriend was there. Did she have that little trust in us? Two more pills for the sorrow I felt over my dog’s death, a seventh pill for the way my sister made me feel irresponsible. Rolling the pills over in my hand, I mentally congratulated myself for such an ingenious idea.
Next, I chose relationships. I plucked out three pills for the pain I felt in my relationship with God, saying a small prayer. God, I used to be your daughter. I loved you, and you spoke to me. I knew what you wanted me to do, and I did it. How did this fall apart? Now, I don’t even give a damn whether or not you’re real. You see? I’m cussing in prayers. I wouldn’t do that if I thought you were real. Four more pills were added for the relationship I had with my boyfriend. We were in love, of course; everyone agreed. But I had sworn to myself I’d never let a relationship progress to the point ours had until I was married, and now my body was acting suspicious. Don’t let yourself think about that, it will only make things worse. Focus on the problems, not the details. Besides, if you have a baby in there, these drugs will take care of it before anyone knows. I chided myself a little more while shoveling out two more pills. I studied my hand, counting how many pills I had so far: sixteen. That wasn’t nearly enough to make me sick. There had to be more problems than this. If this was all I had, what was the point in doing this?
I propped myself up on plush pillows, careful not to spill aspirin across the sheets. I tried to think of what purpose my life held, why I was still stuck in this same boring abyss I had found myself in since birth, but nothing of meaning surfaced. Slowly, I measured out five more pills. How much damage could twenty-one pills do to my body? I wondered. I only weigh ninety pounds, so I have to consider that, too. Finally, I could wait no longer. I added four more pills while telling myself that if my boyfriend didn’t love me enough to let me know where he was when he was supposed to be here, he must not love me at all. Before I could change my mind, I tipped my head back and began taking them five or six at a time, chasing each dose down with a swig of water. I chugged them greedily, starving for the sweet medication and its magical effects. At first, nothing felt different. I sat still for a full fifteen minutes before doubt began creeping into my thoughts. Surely that was enough to at least do something! I thought. I began counting out more pills when I realized my hand was shaking. It started out as a trembling but began to grow, and the tremors started shaking my entire body, causing the small aspirin bottle to rattle like a baby toy. That’s when I knew the pills had entered my bloodstream. Sweat began to break out in large, heavy beads across my forehead, but I was so cold. My stomach felt as if it was twisting in knots, and I could feel sickness bubbling up in my throat. I struggled to choke the nausea back, commanding myself not to throw up. If you throw up, it won’t do any good! Besides, the medicine isn’t in your stomach; it’s in your blood! I kept repeating to myself that this is what I wanted: I wanted to be sick. I wanted someone to find me here and think I was dead. I wanted that attention. No matter how many times I drilled those thoughts into my head, I couldn’t help but wonder why I was doing this. Maybe my plan wasn’t as smart as I’d considered it. The shaking grew worse and the nausea overpowering. I forced myself to lean over the edge of the bed and throw up, violent heaves that wracked my entire body, leaving me sweaty and breathless. The nausea might be gone, but I still had to get the drugs out of my blood.
Slowly, I lurched towards the bathroom without stepping in the puke that covered the floor. Three sinks wavered in front of me, each with matching pink razors sitting on them. I reached out my quaking hand and groped for the one that was real enough to cut through my skin and into my veins. I finally landed upon something substantial, and I grasped the cold plastic handle. Pulling furiously, I removed the blade and instantly pushed it into the underside of my forearm. I cut and cut without any pattern, watching as the blood gushed down my arm. I kept slicing until I felt weak. The shaking subsided. There, I thought, that’s what I needed to do. See there, I feel so much better now. I should have known how stupid it was to abuse drugs—people die that way. I kept repeating this in my head until the edges of my vision darkened, and I realized that I had made a mistake. I shouldn’t have cut so many times. The drugs weren’t out of my blood—my blood was out of me. The world around me became fuzzy and black. “No, no! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to!” I screamed, my words slurring as my body lost power. I slid to the ground, not feeling the impact of my head against the sink or the thud of my body against the floor.
I had become a statistic.