Lit (2009)
“Know anyone else who can say that.
—Franz Wright, “Alcohol”
Through the baby monitor comes a single raspy cough. It barely pierces the heavy sleep that wraps my skull in sodden layers of papier-mâché. Static follows, then a tinny whimper. I fold one pillow over my head. Another gets tucked in my concavities. The husband’s long body unrolls. The white noise machine he’s installed to block out all disturbance makes the brain-sucking racket of a dentist’s drain. It vacuums all consciousness from m...y head. Sleep.
Till a doubled cough punctures my head like two shots from a nail gun. I blink my eyes open to the room, immaculately black as he likes it, but for the faint luminosity of the upraised clock hands (2:50) and the tiny red snake eye of the monitor. I fix on it to stop my mind’s inward roiling vertigo an instant—a marble looping around a barrel.
My head is grinding out bad news: That bruise on your shin is bone cancer…. But one glance at the husband’s profile, and I flash on my only happy thought for weeks, the smooth moonstone of an idea.MoreLess
—Franz Wright, “Alcohol”
Through the baby monitor comes a single raspy cough. It barely pierces the heavy sleep that wraps my skull in sodden layers of papier-mâché. Static follows, then a tinny whimper. I fold one pillow over my head. Another gets tucked in my concavities. The husband’s long body unrolls. The white noise machine he’s installed to block out all disturbance makes the brain-sucking racket of a dentist’s drain. It vacuums all consciousness from m...y head. Sleep.
Till a doubled cough punctures my head like two shots from a nail gun. I blink my eyes open to the room, immaculately black as he likes it, but for the faint luminosity of the upraised clock hands (2:50) and the tiny red snake eye of the monitor. I fix on it to stop my mind’s inward roiling vertigo an instant—a marble looping around a barrel.
My head is grinding out bad news: That bruise on your shin is bone cancer…. But one glance at the husband’s profile, and I flash on my only happy thought for weeks, the smooth moonstone of an idea.MoreLess
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