Kory Calico

INTIMACIES OF PAIN 

I don't know enough about anything to even try anymore, McAfee told me. He said, "I don't know enough about anything to even try." He sighed—it sounded like something wet, warm, and soft, crumpling. I said, "Please." 

He was quiet and I was scared. 

And then he whipped out a pair of pincers. He maneuvered the instrument with a dexterity of someone familiar with the intimacies of pain. I was not familiar, as I told you, I was afraid. He whirled the pincers around and they looked like a glimmering hand, like his hand, except his hand doesn't glimmer. He made a move to plunge the pincers into the place where all the pain was, where the pain was centered like a nest of stars burning, aching to make their way out of me. I was still, but then I wasn’t. I plugged my hand into the place where the pain was, before he could plunge his unnatural hand into it. I felt all that pain. It was my pain, but Mcafee did what he had to do. 

And that is a two for one. That is the story of how I lost my thumb, and also the story of how I am still alive. 

Kory Calico lives and writes in Atlanta, GA where he hosts the Kill Your Darlings Writers Workshop and co-curates The ALEF performance arts series with Puma Navarro. He likes to think of himself as good person.