Listless

No Disclaimers

9/24/1909
The first time I fell in love was as my frail fingers tip-toed across her sand dune rib cage and held her soft breast.

Her name is Gabrielle and she's from France. She's learning English very fast for only having been in America for a couple of months. Her hair is auburn...

We're in Olalla, Washington (same state as my home in Spokane), under the care Dr. Linda Hazzard. She's the first doctor to earn a medical degree as a fasting specialist. She recently published a book and her treatment is very modern. She's says that I'm the first of her patients to keep a journal.

We've been sipping six cups of vegetable broth a day. That's all we're eating. It has been a week and I am listless.

Cora Brooks

9/28/1909
Last night, Gabrielle and I stayed up past 12. I had avoided her since I'd groped her, but she was still comfortable around me.

She taught me a few words in French. 'Le pain' means 'the bread',  'le beurre' means 'butter', and 'homard' means 'lobster'. The word for 'hunger' in French is 'faim'.

Faim growled in my stomach as it ate my lining. Her fawn eyes with raccoon bags glanced from my left eye to my right eye and over and over again.

I hugged her from behind. My fingertips slid up her right arm following her veins. Her
closed lips smiled faintly as I brushed her inner elbow.

Cora Brooks

10/9/1909
The days in the sanitarium pass as slowly as the fog in this forest. It is so dense that each morning, when we open the doors, the trees in the forest are invisible, besides the closest few. They are scattered around as misty silhouettes. Fog pours into the room. I pretend I can sip it.

Sometimes I confuse being awake with being asleep. I've had dreams as plain and endless as my days and days as numbing as dreams.

Dr. Hazzard says that the cure is imminent, that it waits around the corner of our fatigue and should arrive in a few days.

Cora Brooks

10/11/1909
The first time I kissed someone, I kissed a girl. Her long fingers played with my hair as mine held onto her bony hips. Her chapped lips passed slowly over mine, gently savoring.

I don't suppose I'll see her again after we've been treated and she sets back out to Europe. Perhaps we could be the sort of friends who write each other. I could keep her with me through all my important milestones (marriage and children) until I die.

Cora Brooks

10/18/1909
I may have left the cabin, but perhaps it was a dream. I dragged my slippered feet into the mist and past the ring of ghost trees. It was the first time I'd ventured this far from the cabin since I'd arrived. I felt the damp air on my forehead as I stumbled further.

A possum rested on the branch of an evergreen tree. At it's base, I thought I made out a skull on the floor in the fog. It's eyes were granite and hollowing. I briskly turned away and kept walking.

I crossed paths with a kind woman in a plain grey dress and stripped apron. She had a homely face and distressed black hair.

We weren't far from her house. She took me inside her toasty kitchen, sharing with me a bowl of porridge. The honey-sweetened milky mixture was the warmest thing to pass my lips since I'd kissed Gabrielle. She gave me a buttered dinner roll to bring back to Gabrielle and walked me halfway back to Dr. Hazzard's cabin.

Cora Brooks.

10/24/1909
When I gave the roll to Gabrielle she insisted that we share it. I wish I'd insisted that she eat all of it because she died today.

Linda says that she'd caught a cold, but I think the other half of the roll might have helped. I don't think I can stand to use the upstairs bathroom ever again, it's where the doctor is performing Gabrielle's autopsy...