Seventeen started out well. Vanessa excelled at school. She had an active social life. She had a job after school, at the public library, three nights a week. She was talking about college. She had a wide circle of friends and finally, a driver’s license, and everything about her life was lighter and brighter. The […]
Fiction: Vanessa Hoffman’s Conversations on Life and Living and Death and Dying: Section Three by Victor Kreuiter
Vanessa spent most of sixteen at home. Her hair and eyebrows grew back, her color returned, and a glow returned to her skin. She lost the lethargy, her eyes brightened, her posture improved, she gained stamina (and weight), and became a healthy sixteen-year-old. There were still routine examinations. Her doctors were relaxed, their comments were […]
Fiction: Vanessa Hoffman’s Conversations on Life and Living and Death and Dying: Section Two by Victor Kreuiter
Fifteen was tough. It started out, at least from Vanessa’s perspective, muddled. She was home and then she was in the hospital and then she was back home. Her team – she had to have a whole team of doctors? – grew bigger, and then things were discovered by one test or another, and the […]
Poetry: Cat by Martha Strom
Cat i came home crazed the cat willy dubbed diamond, electrified, raced around, almost tripping me several times it might have been that she saw i was keeping my external behavior in check, who knows, but in any case she lay at the foot of my bed like an egyptian monolith— a sphinx– the embodiment […]