CRWR 106

Stunned, I looked up into the branches of the snow-covered trees. Wet snow crystals dropped on my face when the wind shook the branches. Andy was screaming my name, but his voice disappeared into the cold ground. I could taste blood and feel it, fast and wet, filling my mouth. I heard Mom’s shouts and […]

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“As Grandma cried, Dad stayed silent. Mom looked at him. The room was full of unasked and unaswered questions: Will she live with us forever? Will she die young? Will she walk, run, skip, play, read, and write? When she speaks, what will she tell us, what will she say? And also the other questions […]

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The nurses sang a song from the musical Annie as the anesthesiologist fitted the clear plastic mask over my face in the operating room and I began to count backward slowly from ten. The mask was like a toxic flower, and with my nose pushed deep into its dull, gray-colored petals, I was being forced […]

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On the flat surface are the lit shadows of two long leg bones, one not quite long enough, a bit twisted, a bit tentative, searching for its remainder; the left foot points out toward the X-ray’s edge as if it is trying to leap away from the body, although at second glance it looks snuggled […]

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She sat me next to it and went into the kitchen, where she wouldn’t be as tempted to help me stand up but could check my progress periodically by poking her head around the corner. I loved that doll- a little teddy bear with a soft cloth book in the middle of its tummy- and […]

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Traffic was bumper-to-bumper. Cranes swung in the air over buildings-in-progress. Digital billboards advertised cars, bourbon, cigarettes, and cruise holidays. A Chinese opera blared out of a record store. A chaos of smells-car exhaust, rotting vegetables, melting tar, and frying garlic-moved through the sweltering mid-afternoon air. I turned off the main road onto a smaller street […]

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Residual. What’s left when something’s taken away. This strange word that I had never heard before and didn’t completely understand made me sad. I looked out the window and watched as a truck barreled past us on a steep hill. As we passed Abe Lincoln’s monument on I-80, I stared into his bronze, deeply lined […]

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That word: institution.  It is gray and heavy.  I was newly diagnosed with a birth defect that seemed to have already set the stage for my life before the curtain had even gone up.  The play had just begun, and the audience was already disappointed and stressed, mulling about in their seats, complaining about the […]

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On that day of my first dive, there was something secret about the water, although it was clear and emitted the scrubbed-clean smell of bleach and chlorine. I had seen many people dive off this same ledge, and today it was my turn. Without my glasses, the black lane markers were blurry; they looked like […]

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I would have needs, different from those of other babies, that my parents might not be able to solve, and these would be more serious than colic or refusing a bottle. My needs might carry me into an institution. That word: institution. It is gray and heavy. I was newly diagnosed with a birth defect […]

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“I believe that deep in my memory I hold this image of my mother behind the glass, sending me a kiss and looking at me as if I were the most precious and beautiful baby in the world. Although these circumstances of my birth are factual, it’s difficult for me to imagine the scenes: being […]

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“The mask was like a toxic flower, and with my nose pushed deep into its dull, gray-colored petals, I was being forced to inhale its dangerous scent. The anesthesiologist stared down at me as the flower-venom disintegrated in my mouth…I would never be able to snorkel or dive without thinking of that mask. Having plastic […]

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