This morning, I pulled the strap of my sandal through the buckle, tight, and felt the muscle memory of a day spent walking in D.C., a blister forming on the bottom of my heel, the endless mall and museums, looking up and around and nodding, the rubbing a nagging, forgotten when I pulled it off that night and remembered a week later when I pushed the white bubble, the wrinkled skin a fingerprint over contained water. This morning, I pulled the strap of my sandal through the buckle, tight, and felt the muscle memory of a day spent walking, out of a hospital on York Avenue in September, the air cold, the scarves wrapped tight around necks and heads, eyes squinting with wind tears and the gray sky, the brisk life around me oblivious to what lay in the hospital behind me, my baby, my baby,
pseudo-tumor cerebri they said, shaking their heads at the rarity.
A complication from weaning steroids. It will resolve, they said, as they stuck their needles into her bowed spine, screaming, pulling the fluid out, relieving the pressure that I'd found, myself, a fingerprint over contained water on the top of her head, the fontanel bulge.
