A young woman wearing my deceased grandmother’s favorite housecoat filled in for my acupuncturist today. She ushered me into a pale yellow treatment room, lit a Pine-Sol scented candle, and cleaned my skin with individually wrapped alcohol wipes she kept in her bra strap. Instead of needles, she treated me with nanna’s old clothespins, fishing them out three and four at a time from the coat’s daisy-dotted pockets. I wept, as I sometimes do on this table. I am sorry, bubbala. So sorry. She dried my eyes with a balled-up tissue, kissed my forehead, and embroidered wings atop wounds.
Fiction - ISSUE #30