Life Is About Losing Everything by Lynn Crosbie

Author:Lynn Crosbie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2012-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

THE CRACK BABIES

The last time I got bronchitis, I quit smoking.

Then I read about my lungs, which are upside-down trees. Their branches and leaves capture dirt and debris.

The leaves become paralyzed after too many stormy days.

My lungs start to fret and whimper things to my brain, things that this nefarious organ interprets as follows: Go to the store. Buy a package of cigarettes.

Do it now.

Put the package in your mouth and eat it.

A little while later, my lungs start to falter, their whisperings becoming mostly unintelligible: red match-head, sulphur, nice. That hit, the first one, oh that’s so good.

Then they start screaming.

They have turned into furious, neglected, filthy infants. Crack babies, desperate for something they need or all it is they know.

Babies in black singlets, howling.

I lace my hands below my ribs and squeeze, cradling them.

I fall asleep and dream of a woman and her strange little daughter who wears thick glasses and a beehive.

The girl is drawing a picture where everything is upside down.

A speck-sized white bird walks carefully across the grass, and the green sky is filled with even smaller, paler mice.

Nice, the babies say, and it is their first word.

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