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Stroke: A Right Hemisphere Love Story |
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by Julianna Baggott
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1:20 |
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Holding this wine glass – my hand is a paddle of hooks. See, honey? See, this? You’re not here. Instead a bright hollow pain in my head. The window reflects party guests, exists as a notion of guests, light, moths. All of these people and no one knows the window pane! We’re lit -- bright pins, needles. Pin-cushion souls with glowing perforations. Not to mention the dead. Looking for you, I rummage through them with my hook paddles – and the coats locked in the dark bedroom. The living shed. My mother is here, telling me she’ll hold my hair back if I get sick. My mother, fatty beef rinds, smells of boxed ribbon. Her buttons go bright. And you’re here. I say, I am finally amming. But my throat contracts, my lips cinched like trying to speak with a shiny whistle tucked in one corner of my mouth. We swim like this. Tumble, tumble, whistling your teeth bared like a dog, you’re a dog, my furry dog, furry rug – suddenly pressed against me. You are cuff-linked to the world of things. You are falling on top of me saying words like baubles. You are hunched blur of mouth o and o you are not you because I am you our blood can barely contain our joy we are doors swinging oval joy lift the day reel is is
Julianna Baggott is the critically acclaimed, bestselling author of sixteen books over the last ten years, with three novels slated for publication in the next three. Her novel, The Pretend Wife, was written under the pen name Bridget Asher, and published in June 2009. She also writes bestselling novels for younger readers under the pen name N.E. Bode, and her latest novel, The Ever Breath (Random House), was published in December, 2009.
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