Observances

by Stephanie Wright

The anesthesiologist lowers the mask over your face as I watch from the observation room, nodding my head to the counting I know you're doing in yours. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six; you sleep. The mask reminds me of the oxygen mask they put over my face the day I had the baby, which reminds me of you teaching her to ride her bike, which reminds me of the God awful snows that year and the amaryllis you gave me at Christmas. You've given me one every year since. I kneel now and pray. Amaryllis wouldn't do for a grave.

6S

Stephanie Wright, author of Relocation, is a social psychologist on faculty at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina. She is the author of The Witch War Histories, an urban fantasy series currently at four novels and counting with books five and six in progress. Triplex Coniunctio, the first in the series, was first published in 2004. A self-admitted flake and indecisive adolescent playing at being a grown up, both she and her writing can be found here, although she makes no claims to the sanity of any of it.