Phenomena
Who comes back
Lignocaine numbs necrosis as photonic light returns. Her waxen, fasciculate face stares with oblique-eyed delirium at half a dozen dysplastic masked doctors
Lips perfusing from cyanotic blue to fleshy paresthesia red, hypoxic fingers clinging to the stitching in each axonal side. It's a reanimation of the body corpus
And yet, she was at subluxation peace seconds ago, in some sialorrhea savannah of nystagmus nirvana. Clad in white, a familiar sight... her late sister glowed in the circumambient heliacal sun
Was that a hypoglycemic hallucination? Was that an eschatological end?
Eschar burning effuses from her left leg, femoral phantom. Wary and wight, she lifts her head from the cadaveric steel table. Pulsatile pairs of gloved hematuria hands press and pause. Firmer, FIRMER
Hypoxic chills electrify her static weight as telemetry monitors bleep and buzz in arrhythmic anastomosis. Ischemic anarchy constricts, a convulsive epistolary to nervous system centrality
At—The—Cusp
Walking barefoot on neuropathic sand, and once more she is returned. God-given air dusts the myelin sky in heart-shaped shades of parasympathetic rebound
A found hand grips hers. Familial bonds of blood and preternatural spirit live on as two psychogenic arterial twins, a nether ether neither here nor there, so where?
Herein, salvific solace
(c) Edward Swafford 2026
*TITLE IMAGE URL
About the Creator
Edward Swafford
Hello! I'm an Australian writer and healthcare professional. I've written on Medium for over three years, run Black Coffee Creative on Substack (over 1000 subscribers), with select work published in lit mags 😴.
Edgy syntax is my bailiwick.
Keep reading
More stories from Edward Swafford and writers in Poets and other communities.
Comments (2)
This is haunting and intensely vivid, like being pulled through a surreal, medical dream where life, death, and something in between blur together beautifully.
Wow! the rush and whirl in my head, after reading this, is akin to being anaemic and standing up too quickly. Bravo, dear Edward. Phenomena is a phenomenal phenomenon. ✨💖