Fix by J. Mann (highly illogical behavior .TXT) 📕

fall away from my ears and allows my lungs to open like two butterflies lifting off into the sky. And, I guess, it turns me into a bad poet.

I yawn so big my jaw cracks.

A very tired poet.

I sit in the tub and stare down at the bath mat. Happy?

Happy.

I hear Sowah’s voice.

Nineteen degrees.

A miracle.

Something We Both Knew

On some long-ago

gloomy afternoon

my mother stepped

into my room

with clean sheets. A

simple, neatly folded stack of

clean sheets.

The fitted sheet is kind of fun to put on, but

the flat one sucks. You can

fling it up and out a

hundred times yet

it never lands right.

With zero hope of success, I

picked it up at one end and

flung it into the air with a hefty

snap!

A snap that caught my attention.

A snap that felt right on.

A snap I watched float down to the bed and…

land perfectly.

In that moment

a dream was born.

A living, breathing

dream.

The snap.

The floating

down,

down,

down

and the

landing, softly…

even.

It is Dr.

Sowah,

holding on to my toes

while I lie

so still,

and then, just like the sheet,

he snaps me

up into the air

where one by one by

one,

the vertebrae in my very crooked spine

crack,

crack,

crack

into a perfect bumpy line

as I float to the bed

straight at last.

Like all daydreams,

it was satisfying, comforting,

and I spent hours

envisioning this lovely, simple

snap. Ignoring things like

pedicle screws, interbody fusion,

blood.

Just as Lidia

spent hours on her

website, repeating words like

elegant, flexible,

lightweight. Ignoring words like

glove, individual digits, and

TrueFinish™ technology.

It was a dream.

There was

no soft landing. And

copyrighting a word like

TrueFinish™

didn’t make it true.

But there was a landing.

For me.

You could be straight,

if you wanted.

Sawed open.

Rearranged.

Stapled shut.

Something we

both knew.

The Real One

You said

it was his grin.

But I knew

it was my surgery.

The rest of New Year’s Day

you spent talking about

that grin…

his bright eyes…

the sure way he’d plucked the hat from your head…

then the grin…

again.

The guy was

literally in our presence

for thirty seconds, yet

somehow,

you’d noticed enough

about him

to pontificate endlessly.

Meanwhile. I didn’t say a word—

about what you hadn’t told Jayden, or

the dread I felt

imagining Nick’s disappointment

when he showed up on Saturday

and found

me.

But what could I have said?

I needed you, Lid.

God, I needed you.

More than I ever had.

Everything was changing.

Literally,

everything.

In two weeks,

my skin,

my muscles,

my bones,

even my belly button

wouldn’t be in the same place.

So I did what I’d always done.

I pulled my head inside my plastic shell

and stayed there.

The date was a week away.

Anything could happen in a week.

Holiday break was over.

School started tomorrow.

You’d have volleyball.

Our English term papers.

Your hand on its way.

My surgery around the corner.

You’d forget that grin.

Forget his bright eyes.

You’d forget the date.

Slow Motion

LOUD KNOCKING.

My mother.

“Eve!”

The world spins in a tiny circle as I remember where I am.

The bathroom door opens a crack. And then it swings wide.

“Are you in the tub? What the hell, Eve? How did you get in there?”

But she stops and looks away when she sees me hug myself for privacy. She didn’t come in here to get angry. She takes a breath and resets herself.

“Hey, how about this,” she says. “Let’s put some soap in there with you. It looks like you’ve got a few inches or so before the water reaches the bottom incision. At least you can clean your legs and your… your…”

“What kind of feminist are you that you can’t say vagina, Mom?” But I’m smiling.

She snorts. “It’s actually a vulva,” she says.

“Mom.” I roll my eyes and drop my arms, modesty over, while she pours bodywash into the water and swishes it gently with her hands to make bubbles, eyeing my staples. It’s hard not to notice them. They begin up under my left armpit, run down to my navel, and then over to my right hip. There is a separate track that runs from between my scapula down to my butt. I can’t see those. I can only feel them.

“Wow,” she says.

I think it’s the first time she’s seen what Dr. Sowah did. I’m happy to shock her. I sometimes feel so damn… uninteresting to her.

“Hey, I know,” she says. “Do you want me to shave your legs? And after I help you out of there, we have you lean over the tub wall and I’ll use the shower attachment to wash your hair.”

“Um.” I think. “I like the shaving-of-the-legs thing, but I’m not sure about the leaning part.”

“Well, let’s start and see where we get,” she says.

She helps me stand and then carefully wraps my many staples up in a towel. This way, I can lean against the shower tiles while she shaves my legs, rinsing off the soap with the shower attachment. The warm water feels so good. The sudden need to be clean is overwhelming.

“Okay, get me out,” I say. “Let’s try the leaning thing.” It’s not as good as a real shower, but it’s something.

Getting out with my mother’s help is so much easier, and so much less scary, than getting in had been. She dries my legs with another towel and then trots off to my bedroom for a clean body sock and a fresh pair of sweats, leaving me alone with the Roxy. I can see it in my peripheral vision but don’t move to look directly at it.

When my mother returns, she also has a glass of water. “Where’s your medicine?” she asks. “This is a lot of activity for you. You might want to take one.”

Stunned, I stare at her. What do I do?

“Eve? Sweetheart?”

Sweetheart.

I point at the Roxy sitting on the back of the toilet.

She picks it up and spills one out, handing it to me. I take it from her in slow motion, bringing the white pill to my lips, moving for the glass, filling my mouth with water. Doing it all because it comes from her. But it’s my decision to swallow.

She removes the glass of water from my hand and sets it on the sink counter, and then helps me into the body sock by placing it over my head and carefully rolling it down over my incisions.

I can feel it already. The Roxy. Rushing into