Literary Nonfiction

You can see them, if you look closely, in all the old photographs: my fingers flush at the knuckles and nails, squeezed tight as window blinds so no light can slip between. It’s Christmastime in this one. We’re standing in front of the flocked plastic tree. The parcels beneath it, shiny gold with silver bows, …

On my medical records, the procedure’s sometimes called a scar revision, which makes more sense if one considers that the flesh on my right cheek had nearly a year and a half to heal into a scar, smooth as a wax taper’s cooled drippings, before the reconstructive surgeon reopened the matter. More often than not, …