FROM ISSUE #49: SURVIVAL STORIES
GENEVIEVE ANNA TYRRELL is a visual artist and creative writer. She earned her BS in Electronic Media and Film at Towson University and her MFA in creative writing at the University of Central Florida. Her writing has been published in Creative Nonfiction, the Rumpus, Hippocampus Magazine, Carve Magazine, and Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine. Her art has appeared in the Rumpus, Smokelong Quarterly, and Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine. She is an assistant editor for Ghost Parachute, which has a flash fiction anthology forthcoming. She lives with her husband and daughter in Altamonte Springs, Florida, and teaches flash fiction and scriptwriting.
I am waiting, you know. Waiting. For the next note. For the next beat. Something other than dead air. To connect the dots. This melody we live. Something other than, You’re just fine. Something other than normal results. Something that acknowledges the walls falling down inside my body. Something that attaches itself to the intuitive pangs that signal, WARNING. WARNING. ABANDON SHIP. It’s always there, this hope, this longing, to know why I feel sick when every test says I’m healthy. But I don’t hold my breath. I’m not expecting a savior. There are no angels here
How can someone be so broken but still hit off the charts as exceptionally normal?
My mother has begged this doctor And all I could think was, She’s nice enough, but then half of them are nice at first. And nice is up there with not-a-mass-murderer. Nice is smiles with a handshake. Nice is pretending to listen. They seem harmless. They think it’ll be easy. They’re sure they’ll have answers. And when they don’t, well baby, they don’t know you anymore;
