{"id":2017,"date":"2021-09-15T17:24:33","date_gmt":"2021-09-16T00:24:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=2017"},"modified":"2024-11-25T13:30:38","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T21:30:38","slug":"medicine-by-jackson-burgess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test-inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/medicine-by-jackson-burgess\/","title":{"rendered":"“Medicine” by Jackson Burgess"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Found in\u00a0Willow Springs 85<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Medicine” by Jackson Burgess<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

You could spend half a lifetime trying to learn what another body needs, and believe me, I have, making eyes at the showerhead, poking holes in water balloons. My bad times brought me to Mercy Hospital, where I watched doctors flush saline through my veins and tasted nauseous ocean. Bad times fingering the hole in my neck where they threaded a tube to my belly, bad times grieving the veins they killed. Last night in a dream, I let the doctors catch my best friend because it meant I could escape, and then I watched through a window as they opened his brain. With each prod in a different place, a new part of him squirmed, until they’d learned to work him like a marionette. He looked at me in my window and said, Now look what you’ve done<\/em>, and laughed. One time, I found my bad times in an orange bottle of codeine and discovered the funhouse behind my eyes. Rabbits and opossums congregated at my doorstep, bar backs looked at me like I was diseased. And in all my bad times, you were watching-I could feel you in the walls. I missed you like a hole misses its shovel, empty, full of air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You could spend half a lifetime trying to learn what another body needs, and believe me, I have, making eyes at the showerhead, poking holes in water balloons. My bad times brought me to Mercy Hospital, where I watched doctors flush saline through my veins and tasted nauseous ocean. Bad times fingering the hole in my neck where they threaded a tube to my belly, bad times grieving the veins they killed. Last night in a dream, I let the doctors catch my best friend because it meant I could escape, and then I watched through a window as they opened his brain. With each prod in a different place, a new part of him squirmed, until they’d learned to work him like a marionette. He looked at me in my window and said, Now look what you’ve done<\/em>, and laughed. One time, I found my bad times in an orange bottle of codeine and discovered the funhouse behind my eyes. Rabbits and opossums congregated at my doorstep, bar backs looked at me like I was diseased. And in all my bad times, you were watching-I could feel you in the walls. I missed you like a hole misses its shovel, empty, full of air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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