Settler words&music in S'ólh Téméxw, (leanpub.com/upsun) living where privilege meets precarity in MST country. she/her/they———– Novels: Midnite Moving Co., Upsun; Sweep Off Those Waves coming soon, Hair Sinister after that. —Restore All Indigenous Lands!
‘Black people in horror’ mini posters. No Duane Jones (Night of the Living Dead lead) tho.
so this is northbound on 8th in New West where it crosses 10th and this is one of the most dangerous intersections in the city so whyyyyy?
The sky, when it shrugs off its habitual shawl of fog and low cloud, is blue. It flickers sometimes. A low, static cloud of dense dark grey settles over the town every few days, but I don’t like to divide the passage of time into days.
People say: I’m going to sleep now, and then they lie down and wink out of existence. That’s how I imagine it. I haven’t slept yet. I haven’t caught anyone disappearing, and yet they do.
I believe it’s been a long time, yet there are signs that not much time has passed, and since I don’t sleep it’s hard to tell. I’ve been awake long enough to know that I’m the only one who stays awake all the time. I watch the others sleep to make sure that they don’t disappear when they’re asleep. I try to read but I can’t keep the words steady in my mind long enough to take any nourishment from them. Mostly I stand at the window. Someone is playing in the yard. I see her clearly but only for a moment, and she’s horrified at how I look and her face shows it and I run away to the bathroom to brush my hair and run right through a woman. The sunlight that the child was playing in is gone. The woman is gone. I’m alone but when I move to the master bedroom I can see breath rising from the bed.
I didn’t know I could see that. I’m so fascinated that I watch, watch, watch, each little puff and I’m filled with grateful wonder that my eyes can bring me this. I bring my hand up to cover my eyes, to check if this is real or my mind is filling in some blanks, and then I wish I hadn’t. The scene has changed and I’m sitting on the ground in the open; the house has burned down and I was too busy looking at something else to notice. It bothers me that I missed the fire but on the other hand maybe people died and I’ll have company.
It doesn’t seem that way. I get the sky all the time but that doesn’t last. Workers walk through me and I let them pour concrete through me, thinking perhaps I’ll finally stop having to look at anything but my imagination.
Dang, kid, you’re younger than my children. No thanks.
following is fictional…
Dad staggered away from the kitchen in an exaggeration of his normal walk. He had grimly supported Mom through the whole ghastly process of getting the equipment through customs, and grimly supported her in the sequelae, which included about four dozen eggs on the outside of the house and a number of unpleasant encounters with the more tender hearted of their neighbours, including the one neighbour they were always having fencing discussions with, and whom they suspected of allowing access for youthful depredations.
Now the damned machine was here, and it was as if every item which had been eviscerated from his diet was now coming at him as extruded by this knitting machine of the damned.
She’d seen it in a catalog, and ever since had wanted it so.
Dad couldn’t watch. He knew he would not be able to resist, even knowing where the meat had come from.
________
So, today there was news about knittable meat. There was also meat you could wear and meat you could form in rainbow layers and other kinds of Modern Foods kinda meat.
I DON’T want to know what the meat was. In the story, that is. Sometimes the depths of one’s subconscious are a small but entertaining tidal pool.
after the morning, which was emotionally exhausting and frankly a new recent low point, I went into the shop to bake and wash dishes, and within minutes I was lying on the floor wondering what the fuck just happened.
I skidded on a piece of plastic on the floor, collided with the pizza oven, and then the sweet sweet floor rose up to meet me. I never hit my head or lost consciousness, so I was able to immediately diagnose that I’d dislocated my right shoulder. I got up from the floor walking like a zombie and shot through with pain, called Jeff, and he couldn’t come get me because he was having mobility issues of his own. I called 911 and waited. And waited. And waited. I was coping with levels of pain and disorientation that are right up there with giving birth unattended. I couldn’t control my breathing and I was sweating so hard I couldn’t see.
The boys from #2 firehouse came and attempted to administer oxygen, and tried to put my arm in a sling but I was screaming and crying a little too enthusiastically for that. The firemen were very kind. I did a lot of moaning and crying waiting for the ambulance. After a very very long wait for the ambulance (yesterday was a record day for the Emerg because of a lot of MVA’s roof falls tree falls and other crush injuries (the announcements for cleanup help in emerg got squawkier and squawkier while I was in MTU)) I finally dipped my beak in some blessed, blessed nitrous, which doesn’t kill pain as much as it prevents you from screaming about it.
After the eternity of a twenty minute ambo ride I was shoved against the wall in triage and Dr. Lim came within 5 minutes and said, “I don’t think it’s dislocated.” And I said, then why does it hurt like a mofo and I’m walking like a zombie??? He checked again and faster than it takes to describe it, the ball went back in the socket.
Then many hours of waiting for xrays and results, and then I was released with a referral to a bone doc, 6 T3s, movement instructions and a sling, since it turns out the shoulder is broken as well as formerly dislocated. Right shoulder OF COURSE.
I slept about as well as could be expected and am now attempting to come to terms with what is going to be a longish and interesting recovery. The shop will have to be sold, I can’t do nothing for 6 weeks or however long this takes. I’ll know more on the 26th when I see the bone doc. I did advise that I have extensive numbness down that arm and that my two outside fingers are very tingly and weak; whether this presages really bad news for that nerve or is just my response to swelling who knows; Jeff advised me to be optimistic but not to lighten up about knowing what’s going on which I think is fine advice.
I am very glad I don’t live alone. I am super grateful to my church family, who have been souls of kindness.
