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200 Looking Up at the Ceiling 1 Two days there’s been a door ajar in my immune system and hints of an intruder. My holistic physician prescribed salt water, zinc tablets, Vitamin C and Yerba Santa capsules. My solution—go to the movies. 2 Now I’m in my bathroom, staring overhead while gargling warm salt water. The ceiling’s the texture of the moon’s front side, a silvery screen bouncing back the glow from the light bar above the mirror. Freshly painted walls already show a new crack where corner meets corner. I’ve seen its twin zigzagging through the white tile around the bathtub from an unnamed earthquake fault whose jolt has made its presence known as this lightning bolt. 3 You can guess where this thought is going, can’t you? It’s shifting a mile off underground. 201 My death is building itself out of incidents starting with my birth, my various broken bones and system failures of one kind or another, the little slippages that barely register in a life. Richter-wise, they’re nothing more than a bad edit in a movie or dropped syllable in a voice-over. In the mirror, there’s someone working her way back to sucking her gums like a baby, twisting the hair on her head in little circles with her fingers, a shiny drop of something like the ocean running down her chin. ...

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