wildscape. literary journal

What’s the Craziest Thing You’ve Seen?
by Jordan Cobb

Have you ever known the kind of sobs that bellow 
through blank walls? That pour from open mouths 
like broken faucets—a pair of sons who stare 
as you press the stethoscope to the paralyzed chest 
of their father, DNR only twenty-four hours ago? 

There was a woman who wintered once
in the westernmost room where the sun struck through
the smudged windows while she ‘battled’ her illness,
her alien invasion. We called it exponential growth 
when we told her the cells had re-invaded her body.
 
The symptoms drove her platelets too low,
which makes one prone to bleeding; her nose leaked, 
then gushed, then flowed. A waterfall. Isn’t that a cliché to say? 
Just like everything to do with cancer. I pumped her 
full of blood products as I perched on her pleather armchair. 
Tightened three fingers around her bridge bone & squeezed 
as we waited for things to slow. 

& what of the prayers I sent to high heaven? The hands 
I joined in begging for mercy from gods I didn’t believe in. 
Once, I prayed in French because (I learned) death speaks to us 
in our first language. In frozen rooms, they reached for me 
to ask if this is how I’d see the others go. 

I know you were probably looking for something 
with a punchline. Easier to swallow. But none of my stories end 
with a joke. I scrawled their initials in Sharpie on sticky notes 
because full names would be a HIPPA violation. The squares 
hung in my closet next to the black-tie dresses 
until the glue unstuck. 

about the author // Jordan Cobb