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About the Purveyors of This Smut

Little Girl in Trauma Bay

Was she scared when he came steadily to reap his share?
Did she want to pick up her skinny legs and run?

But they were table-strapped, her convulsions made it so.
And had they not been, they were cut and broken anyway.

Maybe she was long gone before the final pulse beat.
Though these thoughtless monitors insisted she was here.

So what he inevitably collected was not her at all.
But was instead the husk left silently by her soul.

-Breck Thrash

The Woods

Into the woods I traveled one day.
And happened upon a man lost.
Well past noon with clouds gathering.

I convinced him to set about with me.
Into town for I knew the way.
Speaking as we walked.

He appealed to me less and less,
Straying from the path and resting too often.
I chided him over howling in the distance.

My heart sunk with each word,
Somehow the path grew less familiar
And the weather less friendly.

Thoughts of home grew dim.
Tired, angry, the rain set in on us both
As we strode deeper into the wood.

Wind whistled through my clothes
Stinging my wet skin when
I choked on rage at my companion.

On a gnarled, rotted log half buried we sat.
Shivering and sullen, what will become of us?
My friends would not have known me in this state.

It is late in the day but I've made my feet right.
Perhaps the lost man will mark the route.
I cannot lead him anymore.

Anon

Full Circle – For My Mother

You kissed my fingers for comfort when I was small.  I kissed your fingers for comfort when you were old.

You told me who you were before I could recognize you. I told you who I was when you no longer recognized me.

You kept me from falling before I could walk. I kept you from falling when you no longer could walk.

You fed me before I could feed myself. I fed you when you no longer could feed yourself.

You sat by my bed and watched me sleep.I sat by your bed and watched you sleep.

You held me when I took my first breaths of life. I held you when you took your last breaths of life.

And thus the circle is complete.

-Beverly Shipman

Once in a Lifetime 

At 23:18 I returned to my call room having seen something brutal. I lay on my back and struggled. Or wanted to.

“Have you tried bicarb?” I knew he hadn't because I'd been there the entire time. Three liters of fluid had overwhelmed the young man and made its way up the ET tube, spraying us with each artificial breath. There was no fight left in him. The cardiologist grabbed the portable ultrasound for another look. “I don't see anything, there's nothing left to do.” No one stopped the resuscitation.

I wanted to wail like his mother in the next room. I wished to stagger back to my call room, turn pale and fall to the ground retching. I would pull myself onto the call room bed and utterly implode. Over a few days I would rebuild myself, do it right this time.

A second cardiologist walked into the room. “Is this the boy? How long have you been at it?”
“45 minutes” said the first.
“Have you tried bicarb?”
I rolled my eyes.

Laying there, the most I could muster was 5 minutes of something like clarity. His father's wrenched hands, his friends with their elbows cupped over their mouths crying in the hall and his broken mother couldn't hold me longer than that:

“Jesus… Jesus, look at you. He was 14 years old! And you're 29. What have you done with it?”

“Me?” I pondered for a moment though I didn't have to. “Floated. Downstream, wherever the water took me.”

“What would the boy have done with 15 more years? You think he'd have wasted it, like you?”

“I don't know.”

“Who are you then? What have you made that's yours? When did you take a chance? You're 29 years old and you've never struggled upstream. Have you? You asshole.”

But I fell asleep after a few minutes, the same old me. Because part of me thinks, had he lived, the basketball player would have rolled with the punches, just like me.

-Anon, Physician

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