Helpmeet

by Naben Ruthnum

The only difference she could see between the skin that turned the page and the page itself was that words were printed on one surface, but not on the other.

When he was awake, he was in pain. When he moved in his sleep, he was in pain. But when he truly slept, when he was as close to death as he could manage with the help of her needles, nothing hurt, he said.

But she never tended to anyone who mattered, until she married someone who did.

This isn’t like the nose. That came off, like it was being picked at, pulled, tugged like taffy. This is from the inside. I can feel it when I’m going to sleep. Through the optic nerves. Drinking, gently, slowly, like brandy punch through a straw.

A word can have such force, and a name is an entire incantation.

It doesn’t seem fair that you have been inside my body but I haven’t been inside yours, Jean told me.

“There are no ethics to wanting life. I’m not alive when I’m not incarnate. I wish to be alive.”