"Minor Offenses"I heard them as if through cotton, the short nurse whose wide bottom was turned toward me and the black man who filled the doorway. He was asking if I could talk now, saying it was important that he talk to me, and the nurse was nodding, the hairs on the back of her neck pulled so tightly into her cap that I thought if she nodded again I’d hear the twang of them all breaking loose, and maybe even a tiny dot of blood would appear on her white skin where a follicle was torn clean out. I could turn my head, now that they’d taken that thing off, what did they call it? A halo. I didn’t need it after all. June 2008 |
