Medusa in the Emergency Room By Cade Leebron

Call me Curly-Q for the swirled snake IV line spiraling out of my upper arm.

Nothing perfect ever ends, or that’s a lie I’m okay hanging out with. It’s late

here in Middletown, it’s unspecific. His hands tap fake drum beats to get

the drip rate just right, love tastes like prednisone. In the hospital a trainee

makes me waterfall all over the room. Gore is a biohazard, and he misses the best

parts. I tell it to him after, like: you should have seen her face! My arm was a spout,

his hands are like drums, lately neither of us feels real. I call him Curly-Q for

the way his hair loops around and around his face like a snake. We’ve become

something unspecific, same as this town that probably exists in almost every state.

I rename it Diagnosisland and like our love or a stretched-out vein, it lasts forever.

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Cade Leebron lives in Columbus, OH. She holds an MFA from The Ohio State University, where she served as an editor at The Journal. Her work has appeared in The Boiler, American Literary Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She exists online at www.mslifeisbestlife.com, and on Twitter, @CadeyLadey.