H.E. Fisher
LYMPH, 1981
It took a year for the gland in my neck to flourish, turn hard, big as a knuckle, and quell me to sleep like the dead on an ancient mattress, stained and tufted. The iron headboard, slatted, left behind by a tenant in this East Village tenement, was painted white, a metal rosette at its center. Anything could reach in between those bars. ‘This is what it must have felt like for Mother,’ I thought. At the time, I didn’t understand the difference between exhaustion and the lamination of survival. My doctor said to rest. Hers said, Wait.