Amy L. Eggert
Amy L. Eggert is a writer, a teacher, and a mom. She is the author of Scattershot: Collected Fictions (Lit Fest Press 2015), a hybrid collection that re-envisions the trauma narrative. Additional recent publications can be found in Del Sol Review, Beliveau Review, Midway Journal, Verse of Silence, Cardinal Sins, and Bluffs Literary Magazine. Eggert teaches for Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois.
back into the clinic under the guise of seeking treatment, a shrug
when asked why, when PTSD is offered as cause—a bruise,
a mass metastasizes, seizes the rest. Like shrapnel, shame echoes,
scatters; a stain his brothers can’t evade; an angry, unhealed wound.
You’re stretched out over a motel mattress staring up into a chip of neon that streaks the ceiling, its light bleeding in through a gap in the curtains. You hear voices, low and disinterested, which could be coming from the next room, from the t.v. at the foot of the bed.
assistance gone alone with both lonely days without both fluish angry needing not
their fault hungry homework nights without can’t sleep, doesn’t doctor says just one
pill per small hands stretching, reaching must watch them closely always loads of
laundry hungry exhaustion just one pill bedwetting wakes older regression consoling
