The C Word
I’m a cancer survivor – for now, anyway. Every three months, I must have half a dozen tubes of blood drawn, and my chest scanned, to determine if any cancer cells have migrated, nomads in search of grass and water. With a practiced eye, the phlebotomist, a coolly efficient woman in a lab coat, has identified the best vein to use. She swabs the crook of my arm with an alcohol pad. “You’re going to feel a pinch,” she says. I stare straight ahead to avoid watching her insert the needle. Holiday decorations are still up on the wall, although Christmas is long over.
Funeral Music
Pushkin was killed in a duel with a French chevalier over his unfaithful wife, as only befits the greatest Russian poet of the Romantic era. Every morning I wake up that much closer to the black river. Grandma believed that eating six rum-soaked raisins a day was the secret to her longevity. After a noisy night of rain, grass reappears, astoundingly still green, from under the brittle old snow.