The Hope We All Hold

by W.H. Rice

They sawed my left leg in half first, and then followed with the right a few hours later. The surgery was dragging on past the ten hour mark, and while I lay unconscious wrapped in layers of milky anesthesia, my family paced the waiting room. Now, pins, staples and various other shiny metal potpourri held my lower appendages together. Weeks later, my mother showed me the shredded piles of thin cafeteria napkins she went through waiting for me to come out. In the end, I will walk straighter. At least that's the hope we all hold.

6S

W.H. Rice, 30, lives with his family in Detroit, Michigan and writes mostly humor and satire for "the internets." In the past, he has been a musician, published poet, short story writer and general slave to the advertising industry.