| ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE.COM |
| ***BIO*** Carissa Halston, 24, is the writer/director of Cleavage (a collection of plays). She co-founded Aforementioned Productions with Randolph Pfaff and they run apt magazine. Her work can be found at Unlikely Stories v1.0, Open Wide Magazine, Fables and apt. |
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| © 2006 zygoteinmycoffee Ink. |
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| by Carissa Halston |
| Today I saw a man with a prosthetic arm
He was black The arm was not The plastic was a hue which would not be categorized as white, but it would also not be categorized as "flesh" toned. It was gray. And I thought, not "That's a shame...that he has no arm." No. That's not what I thought. I thought, "That's a shame that his arm doesn't match the rest of him." But I still thought of it as his arm. Even though his arm was gone. And I wondered idly if he had to smile when they gave it to him. If he'd had it long enough that it had seen the days of segregation. He was pretty old. Old enough that his graying hair had spread past just his temples. Did he have to smile and say 'Thank you. Thank you for this mismatched fake arm which I'll never be able to hide'? I thought of Morgan Freeman in Shawshank Redemption Did he even care anymore? Was he proud of his synthetic arm? Maybe he couldn't see. Maybe he was blind and lame. Then he realized I was staring. So I kept walking, head down, avoiding his gaze. |
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| Sept. 2006 |
| 67 |