Issue 13
Sage
Kelly Elayne
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Maybe Not
I've been reading a lot of nonfiction books about disabled people who are disgustingly courageous. Mostly because my physical therapist, Faruq Asad, says with twinkling eyes, it will "encourage correspondence with the great beyond."
Snorting his flat pink nose, scratching his frizzy mane, gesticulating like he's a regular therapist instead of a mere physical therapist, he spouts gibberish like he's even qualified to suggest such a thing.
He ignites a sprig of herbs, extinguishes the flame, sweeps the smoking nonsense over the length of my paralyzed legs catching the white ashes in his callused hands. His thick accent makes mumbo jumbo sound all urgent and proven, delivered like an oral report; if I'm his homework assignment for some night course in psychotherapy he's going to fail miserably.
Silly titles -- I Am Me -- Dream Walking -- Sacred Steps -- with triumphant conclusions. They're supposed to give me hope, make me think I'll make it through. I only wonder about the people whose stories didn't end on a high note. They never wrote books; they never made it past the foreword.
Faruq turns to place the smoldering herbs on a clay dish. His lab coat buckles in the crease of his back, he coughs, a tickling sensation unfurls from the arch of my left foot.
~Kelly Elayne
Kelly Elayne's fiction has appeared in Tarpaulin Sky, Lean Seed, House Taken Over, Storyglossia and is forthcoming in Poetry Midwest and the Rattlecat Press anthology Coloring Book.
© 2003 by Kelly Elayne. All Rights Reserved.
© Copyright 2003 by Cayuse Press. All Rights Reserved.