Esophagi 2010 Third Place Winner

by Meredith Barrett

Tubes everywhere. They curl around poles and hang from bags and monitors that fill the small hospital room. Tubes going in, tubes coming out. Keeping count of the things our bodies do all day. Snaking under the covers to do what this body can’t. Tubes, plastic wires and their medical tape surround Kim’s frame on the wide bed.  Centered under a thin cotton blanket, the twenty-one year old looks like an infant in an incubator. Helpless, barely awake.

Everything looks too clean, fluorescents washing out the blue and white space. My . . . → Read More: Flash Fiction: Esophagi