Boston Literary Magazine |
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Summer 06
After Her Diagnosis Ruth Housman I see her, kneeling in the garden with her scissors and watering can like smoke she wreathes her way through the flower beds she is milkweed in the early days she sought company lured me with fresh brewed coffee hot buttered biscuits her house was filled with books, her art -- she had a way of painting waves a painted parrot hung from the kitchen ceiling it flew above our heads we always found something to laugh about it seemed necessary I bought a little red notebook to record something stupid, something too ridiculous -- jokes in unlikely places I told her about an astronomy talk the discovery of a strange formation in deepest space, a satellite picture just like a little homunculus -- a child sucking its thumb she smiled, "How delightful!" in the big Boston hospital surrounded by all that's antiseptic and gauze, attached to tubes -- all that plastic she pleaded at me with her eyes "Make me laugh now." I prayed to the goddess of morphine forced a smile that was not quite right. She grabbed for it. She couldn't say it but I felt her words. "Hey, who are we kidding?" She rode out on a dolphin's back a knife in the sun. Ruth Housman is a licensed independent clinical social worker and former speech pathologist whose A Play on Words was produced at the Boston Playwright's Marathon in 2004 by the Portland Stage Company. Many of her articles have appeared in FOCUS, the Mass Association of Social Worker's publication, and she is currently at work on a new play titled Nun of the Above.
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