The Meadow Annual Literary Arts Journal 2020

New Mexico James Hartman Then she does something she’s never before done. She leans over her big oak desk, the farthest she has reached, and press- es her finger into the corner hollow of her eye, as if ensuring she could see him clearer. She smiles, but it is not her platonic therapist smile. Her smile is open, and unexpectedly bright. And despite the electrical currents of pain zinging through his face, on repeat, he wonders if he has ever been this calm, even before his diagnosis. “Let me ask you this,” she says, and flattens her hand, the one with the dark pearl on her left ring finger, across the surface of her big oak desk. It stretches halfway towards him, and stops. “If you could have anything, anything at all, what would you want most?” He massages the top of his left eyelid with his thumb, where the electrical currents of zinging pain accumulate like heavy, stabbing weights. In a crippled voice, he says, “A life with less pain, but I know that will never happen.” “Well,” she says, and doesn’t withdraw her hand. “It’s like driving to Chicago in the dark. It’s five hours west of here, and though you can’t see it, if you keep following the few yards you see in front of you with your headlights eventually you will get there.” He wants to say, “It doesn’t feel like my headlights are even on,” but the electrical currents of pain have paralyzed his upper lip. “Pretend Chicago is your ideal world,” she says. “What else would Chicago have?” He touches two fingers to his upper lip, and rotates them gin - gerly into his skin. It is almost twenty minutes before he can speak again. “New Mexico,” he says, and now stops massaging The Meadow 41