Dispatches

Dear Doctor

Jane Awde Goodwin

Please remove the sharks from my forehead.

Doctor, there’s a bump on my finger and a hole in my forehead, not really a hole but a gap a cave a crater a spot a space that something’s been taken out of. It vibrates sometimes it tingles like a prickly finger is scooping, digging a grey tunnel, a belly button hole on my forehead. Inside it there is cement and three pigeons in a circle vibrating.

Regarding the bump on my finger, it is a silver sphere that pops up shiny from the flesh. What’s that supposed to be? I sat looking at it on the train for a while with my bum on the red fabric and my foot touching silver. It moves under my skin like a groundhog. I would like you to cut it out. Carve that thing out and stuff it into the hole in my forehead like a barbed wire fence.

I’ve called the Health Hotline but they do not have your mirrors or your lights. They cannot see that other than the cement and three pigeons there are sometimes two sharks swimming in the gap in my forehead. One is orange with spots and the other is transparent, showing off his organs. They meet in the middle where there is sometimes a magnetic force. (Is there a medication for this symptom?) If possible I would like those sharks removed, their fish beaks are pointy.

Past occurrences of this ailment (the hotline nurses told me to give you a detailed medical history) include a store setting up shop in my forehead. It was tethered to the hole with a bungee cord. The roof was the colour of a pear and the door was the colour of a cherry. The shop’s door would swing open and a parrot would greet everyone: “Hello, hello, hello.” Sometimes I stuffed roast ham in there to feed him.

I hate to beg but Doctor, please Doctor, can you sew all that shut?

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Jane Awde Goodwin

Jane Awde Goodwin's writing has been published in Room and Prism International, and her entry in the 3-Day Novel Contest (2008) received an honourable mention. She lives in Toronto.


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