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ISSN: 1941-4137 |
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Volume Four Issue One |
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Exorcism at Half Time She said I was possessed by a demon hanging from my doorknob, outlined in the traces of my cold cream on the pillow, a voice like cedar branches falling on my shingled roof in an October snow. Only a demon would drop a whisper into the curving cochlea of my ear, winding round the rim like a basketball circling the net, filling my head with terrible thrumming. Even a tumor the size of a basketball would abandon a hole that deep, she said, (head girdled in bandages, cancerous seeds removed Tuesday). I saw demons fingering her sheer curtains, darting about like minnows above her sofa, slant-eyed as her tabby, but she said if the sick mind can be cut away, the surgeon has already turned the blood to wine. It would take a miracle to move the stone away from my cavernous unconscious; there would still be a sediment of disease needing an I.V. drip of daily scripture. If this is how a boulder becomes simple brain matter, I should pray her discarded thoughts be planted new in me. I might find her tumor in the hospital rubbish with the sponges and needles and discarded gloves, and put it under my pillow to confuse the demon away, but something whispers in my ear: it has taken up residence elsewhere. It never lived in the waiting room of my mind, an appointment with my therapist. I saw it sitting on her head, red legs gangling over white gauze; it was calling a time out, benching me for traveling, using a communion wafer for a score card. |
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