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THE LUNAR CYCLE OF CABBAGES
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I've been sitting in this waiting room for six hours, and I'm starting to daydream at last: the nurse jiggling out of her smock, brown skin against a tan bra. Maybe the kid next to me pulling out War and Peace and reading it aloud in Russian, maybe a tribe of cabbages struggling for survival on the moon. Yes. That's the one I need. I can see the moon's chipped fingernail through the hospital window, and I need to believe that while Dad is getting opened up, innards scraped and sucked four floors above me, a tightly-knit tribe of cabbages is living out their vegetal destiny two hundred thousand miles above him. There, in some sunless crater, the tribe assembles, waxy leaves squeaking as they jostle against each other to honor their dying king. His green ridges have yellowed with age, his roots dried, skin patched and peeled in the airless atmosphere ... The nurse jostles me alert, tells me Dad's fine. Hail to the cabbage king.
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