Fix

are left. Though of course I know how many are left. Exactly how many. Not enough.
An emptiness fills me… if that is even possible, to be filled by nothing.
“She didn’t need it,” he repeats. Although that sentence doesn’t comfort me the way it did two minutes ago.
Why was the hand something we could share, but not the surgery?

The Surgery
That morning felt
more like I was starring
in a movie
of my life, not actually
living it.
I couldn’t stop
narrating
myself.
“Take a shower, Eve.
Scrub with special soap, Eve.
Brush your teeth, Eve.
Don’t swallow any water, Eve.”
Worried that if I didn’t
announce the next move
out loud, I
might not make it.
“Sure you don’t need the bathroom
one more time?” my mother
asked, as she turned to
lock the door.
I shuddered.
Out of all the physical horrors
leading up to this day,
the enema had been
by far
the worst.
You’d think they would have figured out
a better way to get
that done.
I was empty. And I
felt empty,
for more reasons than the
graphically violent last few hours
I’d spent in the bathroom.
Because the fact was
whenever I had imagined
this moment in my life,
and I had imagined this moment
many times,
Lidia was with me.
“Got your bag?” my mother asked.
She could see it in my hand,
but I knew she
just needed to say something.
“Yeah.”
I could see my breath
on the way to the car, but I didn’t
feel the cold. I didn’t feel
anything.
I don’t remember the drive, parking,
or the walk through the hospital—just the
nurse who checked me in.
Name?
Birthday?
Allergies?
Smoker?
I had smoked.
One time.
At Junlin Yu’s party last summer
with Thomas Aquinas.
We’d shared it. First his lips
sucking on it. Then mine. Then
his, again.
“We’re cool now, Eve,” he’d joked when we’d
finished. And I laughed. Because it felt
true. We were cool.
Later that night, Lidia smelled it on me and asked,
“Did you smoke?” And I’d said
no. Not because she’d care if I’d smoked
but because she’d care that I’d smoked…
without her.
When the nurse
asked if I smoked,
I lied
again.
It wasn’t until I was
alone in the room
changing into a soft blue gown that my
chest began to
throb with fear.
Was the nicotine
lingering in my lungs?
Would it affect
the surgery?
A second nurse
brought me to a room,
told me to relax,
have a seat.
I didn’t relax, but
I didn’t sit.
Instead, I paced the
little room, knocking into
plugs and wires and
plastic medical devices. Like I’d lost
all sense of spatial judgment, like I couldn’t
be sure I was actually
there.
The room seemed to be shrinking, the walls
closed in around me,
and I became pretty positive
that the cigarette meant everything.
The door swung open.
“Eve Abbott.”
It was Dr. Sowah, followed by a
crowd dressed in scrubs.
“I smoked a cigarette last summer,”
I blurted.
He chuckled.
He was always chuckling.
It slowed my heart rate,
his chuckling.
“Ready?” he asked.
I didn’t answer.
My arm felt warm.
Then my face.
The room began to retreat
into my eyes.
“You are going to get
sleepy,” said a voice,
but I was already
sleepy. And moving.
My mother. In a hall.
Cold.
So cold. Though
Lidia is there
holding me. Under the bright
lights. It hadn’t happened yet.
None of it had happened yet.


The Real One
You hugged me
too long.
I let you.
Both of us ignoring the mob of
New Year’s Day shoppers
streaming by.
When you finally pulled back,
your face was a blur. Like
the blood pumping through my head
was pumping it past my eyes.
“Bathing suit shopping,”
you said.
“No, Lid.”
“Yes! A bikini. It’s what you’ve
always wanted.”
“Lidia.”
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t make myself move.
“Come on, Eve,” you begged.
I was about to give in when
he came out of nowhere. Jumping
between us, and making the joke that
you looked tough, and
that I should listen.
He was talking to me.
But he was looking at you.
Of course, his true joke was
that you didn’t look tough—
your slender body
lost in the oversize hoodie.
But the joke was on him, because you
were tough. You’d always been
tough.
Just as you were about to give him
the classic Lidia cold shoulder—a
practiced move used on the ever-growing
number of flirting outsiders—he noticed
the fedora.
“May I?” he asked.
Caught off guard,
you nodded.
Gently, he lifted the hat from your head and
placed it at an angle on his own,
posing with
a grin.
A grin that moved both his cheeks
far to the sides of his face and wrinkled his brow.
A grin that held nothing back.
You stood
staring at that grin,
static electricity floating
strands of your long dark hair toward
the atrium of the mall.
“Keep it,” you said.
He looked straight into your eyes,
that grin still
solidly in place, and
suggested he borrow it.
“Until next Saturday.”
It was a date.
He was making a date with you.
And you
said yes.
His name was Jayden.
Jayden of the grin. And
Jayden of the grin had a friend.
Nick.
Though neither Jayden nor you
asked if this was something
I’d agree to.
Maybe—seeing me twisted and braced, he
assumed I’d agree. Because
what other options did I have?
Whatever he thought—you made the date.
For the movies.
For the both of us.
“Lidia,” I said, the second
he was gone. Instantly,
pissing you off.
Lidia.
Just your name.
But what you assumed
I’d meant by it
was apparent.
You just made a date
with someone who does not know
you have one hand.
And yes,
I admit it.
I did mean this.
But I also meant
You just made me a date
with someone who does not know
I’m twisted as fuck.


The Human Form
CAREFULLY, SO CAREFULLY, I PUSH DOWN ON THE KNIFE. The white pill underneath divides in two with a click… and a bit of fine dust, which I press my finger into and stick in my mouth before I set up the next one.
“It’s a good plan,” she says. “And now when your physical therapist comes, you can tell her you’re down to half your regular dose.”
“Exactly, Lid!” I cry.
It is a good plan, cutting my Roxy in half, doubling my stash, regardless of the fact that it’s my only plan. For right now, it makes me feel better.
I position the knife’s blade in the little nook of another Roxy and apply gentle pressure. The clink of steel meeting the wood of the cutting board is so satisfying—the single pill springing apart into two neat little pieces is like the art of collage, dismantling something old to create something new.
“When I’m done,” I tell her, “I’m going to stick