X-ray [ficlet]

The spareness of bone fills the screen, overwhelming in its naked glare. My eyes riveted to the split in the middle of bone, like a crack in the pavement with no tender grass to push up through the empty space.

This was no gentle fall, oh this was graceless, my tumble from an apple tree, though countless branches: their old arms too weak to hold me. Like Alice I was sucked into a rabbit hole, traveling fast as the speed of light – no, faster, even, than that.

I landed upon a bed of red leaves, my body falling at an impossible angle, arm jutting out furiously to slow my fall. My bone exploded into angry violets, their petals stifling my throat till I had to scream in order to let them out.

Now my arm is imprisoned in a cell of white plaster as if to punish it for not being strong enough not to break, and not split open like a crack in the sidewalk of my nursery chant: “Step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back.”

With no tender grass, not even one little violet to push up through the empty space.

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