is this what they mean by sudden fiction?
Usually, the scars don’t bother me. They don’t make it hard to move my hands and they’re light enough that they kind of blend in. But there are moments…like when I forget to get one of those cardboard sleeves, and I’m holding a cup of coffee, and all I feel is pressure until the heat penetrates the scars and all of sudden out of nowhere it’s like I’m holding liquid fire in the palm of my hand. Considering how much coffee to go I get, you’d think I would get used to it, but I still regularly drop my coffee, twice just in the past two weeks. Nowadays I only get my to-go coffee at the outdoor kiosks, so there’s not a big mess to clean up when I forget. But it’s embarrassing.
I have a new strategy now, though. Since I don’t remember where the scars come from, and really don’t even remember the healing process, which was no doubt hellishly painful, I’m free to build my own associations. Just recently I realized that the feeling when the heat breaks through the scar tissue is a lot like the feeling of hot wax on tender skin. So today when I forgot, again, to get the cardboard sleeve and the heat broke through, all I could think of was that one time at band camp, and the tall tall person with the boots and the boobs and the dick, and the match and the flame…but I still dropped my damn coffee.
I have a new strategy now, though. Since I don’t remember where the scars come from, and really don’t even remember the healing process, which was no doubt hellishly painful, I’m free to build my own associations. Just recently I realized that the feeling when the heat breaks through the scar tissue is a lot like the feeling of hot wax on tender skin. So today when I forgot, again, to get the cardboard sleeve and the heat broke through, all I could think of was that one time at band camp, and the tall tall person with the boots and the boobs and the dick, and the match and the flame…but I still dropped my damn coffee.