35. Lymphatic

Since the diagnosis, he made the couch into a home. His testicles would be removed as a rare result of the lymphoma, and the figurative connotations of the procedure were so strong that he was numbed from practical desire. Television offered a continuous gift of temporary distraction. His anti-quest left him in state of bipolar transitioning between contentedness and dis-contentedness, which he likened to a yo-yo in perpetual slow motion. He still craved physical numbness.

A ring of the bell led him to whisper, “Come in” without realizing he had done so – an involuntary and half-hearted response that no one (including himself) had heard. A few moments later, the door opened. A glance shifted from the faces of Huxtables to the face of a friend, who entered the home, set a crumpled up brown paper bag on the coffee table, and as he turned to leave he turned to leaves – his body now a pile in need of raking on the floor.

Inside the bag was a nondescript vial with an eye-dropper cap and a folded note that read:

organic painkiller syrup made from a rare sap – go wild to get mild

Two bitter drops in his mouth, one stinging drop in each eye, and his body was relocated to the comfortable confines of magical clothes. This was the place. No other location existed. These cottons and silks were a new universe, inside of which was a man who had found his new home.

 

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