The policeman pegged me for a drunk or on drugs, but I felt the fear and rage and anguish imprisoned in his uniform and knew I could rock him until he released his clenched pain and spread his cop lips in a smile as wide as the Brooklyn Bridge, as grateful as the spring thaw.
The lawyer figured I wanted money. I’m not a hooker, though I have a heart of gold: a golden heart and healing hands and magic lips to discard his docket and overrule his objections, and a motion to soothe his strangled cries and mangled morals and desperate bone-crushing exhaustion.
The doctor listened intently and nodded his head, pronounced it mania and assigned me a code. He wouldn’t take my hand, but hid shivering inside his books, too cowardly for joy. I won’t take his pills.
The man in room 305 can’t talk or get out of bed, but he smiles as he watches me lift off my shirt and he mews like a suckling kitten as we sail away through the stars, through the cosmos, past oblivion, and then land gently home free, safe at home where the heart is, home sweet home.
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I love “mangled morals” and how the narrator unmangles them.
Nice piece, Jeanne!
Wonderful, Jeannie! Fantastic character you’ve created here. Way to go!
Thanks for reading, and supporting UFR!