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    Pumped for an infant, spilled at the dinner table, used as a tear gas antidote

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Christy Shake

Christy Shake

Christy Shake lives in Brunswick, Maine, with her ten-year-old son, Calvin, and her photographer husband, Michael Kolster. She writes a blog about her son and his epilepsy at calvinsstory.com, and she is working on a memoir. Her essay in this issue is her first published work.

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Poetry

Musings

A stink bug perches on the bristles of my toothbrush. I know more about ventilators than I should. This morning’s coffee tastes luxuriously of earth. As I run through the forest, pileated woodpeckers hammer and cackle from above. I’ve got an ache in the ball of my foot. Some things never give up.

September 2020
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories

Faith Of My Father

The seizure raged for another twenty minutes. As I leaned on the edge of the hospital bed next to Calvin, I wished I could feel his pain for him. The emergency medications appeared to have failed my boy. His fingers, toes, and lips were the color of plums, his oxygen-deprived skin ashen.

August 2014
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