It's Still Life

Mum’s decided it’s time to take me to the doctor because my 1st grade teacher, whose name is Mrs DePugh, which I think is the funniest thing ever, told Mum that I don’t seem to be listening to anything being taught.

Mum’s already looked inside my head with her flashlight and magnifying glass that she uses to thread needles with, and she couldn’t find anything like what I usually stick in my ears … like cotton balls or wet wads of newspaper or sometimes bubble gum … because I hate all the unnecessary noise coming into my head.

I figure when dinosaurs were around it would’ve been much quieter, and I could’ve just swallowed my bubble gum like everybody else does when they’re tired of chewing.

And the doctor tells Mum that my ears are stuffed full of wax.

Well, I told that doctor that I’ve never stuffed a candle in my ear due to Mum not allowing them in the house because Dad told her no more damned candles after she melted a hole in our plastic coffee table and torched Dad’s favourite fishing magazine.

So the doctor flushes out my ears while I’m tipping my head sideways over a metal bowl that Mum says someone probably just peed into, and suddenly I hear more than I want to hear … like that kid over there screaming with all the blood trickling from his hair, and I can hear a nurse in the corner tell another nurse standing in the corner about a doctor who did something to her in the corner, and I really don’t want to hear all these details … so I ask the doctor if I can have my wax back.

Written for Sunday’s Six Sentence Story: “detail”. Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Imagery and poems ©Misky 2023.