A silhouette passed over her face. Shadows stalked the creases of her worried frown. The water dripped. The hard sound punctured a hole in her ears. In the corner of the examination room an odd piece; white lilies, a bouquet for the bones of the soon to be dead. A floral diagnosis, a message to be delivered by the detached, but concerned doctor.
A streak of yellow warms the back of her neck. A stroke of love from the sun that surges through the window arrives.
Last night she watched the streetlights flicker because she couldn’t sleep. Now halos bounce from her eyes to the doctor’s eyes.
“Your condition is chronic.” He says.
She doesn’t listen to him. She only wants to feel the thickness of her aliveness. No reason to listen. He’s wrong. Or she wants him to be because she never quite understood she was given life until she was shown the possibility of death. Everything slowed down to an elongated beat. So much to absorb. The shine from the metal sink, the wheezing sound from the cracks of the walls, the yawning from outside of the waiting room. Yes she even hears that. Everything exaggerated. All the smells of the ammonia, bad breath and dank perspiration. She hears the clumping of soulless shoes and waves of wind and sea. Where has she been all these years? Inside a tunnel, trapped, only to let free she was told, “Your condition is chronic.”
