Mama got cancer. Bummer. I’m eleven, going on twelve. Making shit of my time. Time is still a friend to me but an enemy to my mother. It’s because I grew up too fast, she tells me, and I can’t tell if she’s joking. It’s because your sun is in Cancer. I know that’s a different kind of cancer, but that’s okay. The planets are too big, the doctors too loud, the hospitals too depressing. Always the same cheap nylon chairs, the same fluorescent lights buzzing with dead bugs inside them. The walls are a whiter white than that of our house, smelling of mold. My sister says I look pale most of the time. White like a corpse. Corpses are not white, I want to tell her but then decide against it. Mama got cancer and she says we’ll be just fine after she’s gone. She used to have an explanation for everything but not anymore. She can’t explain why the walls are so white. Why doctors are so loud. Why my mood is so down all the time. Why my sister is being an ass. Why I’m eleven, going on twelve, and why she is forever forty. Why time works in reverse for some of us but not others. Why cells decide to become another kind of cell after a while. Why her cancer just wouldn’t go away. Why my sun is in Cancer but hers is retrograde.
About the Author
Sarp Sozdinler has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Wigleaf, HAD, Hobart, Pithead Chapel, and Maudlin House, among other journals. His stories have been selected as finalists for the Los Angeles Review Short Fiction Prize and the Passages North Waasnode Short Fiction Prize. His work has been selected or nominated for several anthologies including the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction. He edits the literary journal The Bulb Region. He can be found online @sarpsozdinler or at sarpsozdinler.com.
