Heather James 

Remedios

Remedios is a mother. She rolls to her side and hugs the cave as if it still housed –
the invisible, water-baby, before name, sex, lungs… as she wakes on a rolling
stretcher parked between others full of waking women, the lot of them resembling a
junk yard. In the middle of the room is a frigid block of silence. The women look at
the block instead of each other. Her palm spans her abdomen, the infinite space
below her navel, the flat expanse of taut muscle. Her middle finger traces a line
down, down, down the unstretched skin, then crossing it. Thermometer is inserted,
needle removed, arm cuff unstrapped. Remedios re-dresses; she is free. She carries a
brown lunch sack of white pills. Outside the silent and a cardboard Virgin stand
where she hails a cab. She dreams a gray alien wailing; she imagines a blood red bean
floating in a jar.




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Heather James