Wing
Photography by Katie Hughbanks
Water, air, and light—these are life
Katie Hughbanks (she/her) is a writer, photographer, and teacher who loves to dunk her camera under water to see what will happen. She teaches English and Creative Writing in Louisville, Kentucky, US.
Instagram: @katiehughbankspics
Instagram: @katiehughbankspics
Instructions to a Young Child When Grandmom Burns Your Arm
CNF by LM Fontanes
CW: Burn Injury
1. Don't cry, don't cry. What were you doing getting underfoot like that, my God?
2. Don't look at your skin when someone puts you on a stepstool and runs your preschooler stick of an arm under the cold water spigot and don't don't look at the whole box of spaghetti wasted on the spick & span floor.
3. Try not to recall the slanted details of what happened at the kitchen table that first night. Don't worry, though. Shock will create absence. Soon enough you'll have more to remember. You'll be back at that dinette set with upholstered metal chairs and your father will be saying something to keep you calm even though he and your mother disagree on so much.
4. Don't forget Daddy insisted you go to a doctor. Don't try to understand why someone said no hospital. Don't see the dark-paneled room or hear the scissors. Don't listen to the whispered rumble, "The first time the bandages come off will be the worst." And please don't count how many days before the first set of bandages come off.
5. And don't think about why your grandmother didn't apologize or maybe you didn't hear her in your cavern of fear.
6. Don't contemplate how many things can burn you. Lightning, the sun, words.
7. When the day arrives, don't imagine you're ready. No one could be ready to see the skin on their forearm like ribbons. No one could be ready to feel that category of terror while awake, especially at a kitchen table, not a hospital, not a doctor's office.
8. Don't cry. Be brave.
9. Don't forget you were brave.
10. Don't, if possible, re-live this story out-of-nowhere many years later when you're perched on the edge of an exam table at the dermatologist, explaining how the oven in your rental apartment blasted hot air when you opened the door to check the chicken you were baking at impossible degrees. Steam, hotter than boiling water, shocked your right cheek bright pink. Luckily, you were wearing glasses. Luckily, you'll remember to never get your face too close to an oven again. When you start weeping as you tell your childhood story to the doctor, he turns away.
11. Don't imagine that even now you'll be able to decipher the hieroglyphs etched on your aging skin, the faded but indelible message from your grandmother's kitchen, inscribed on the day that you burned.
12. Do imagine she would have been proud of you, so many years later, you who have flown longer than Icarus, wings unmelted, to one day perhaps outshine the sun.
1. Don't cry, don't cry. What were you doing getting underfoot like that, my God?
2. Don't look at your skin when someone puts you on a stepstool and runs your preschooler stick of an arm under the cold water spigot and don't don't look at the whole box of spaghetti wasted on the spick & span floor.
3. Try not to recall the slanted details of what happened at the kitchen table that first night. Don't worry, though. Shock will create absence. Soon enough you'll have more to remember. You'll be back at that dinette set with upholstered metal chairs and your father will be saying something to keep you calm even though he and your mother disagree on so much.
4. Don't forget Daddy insisted you go to a doctor. Don't try to understand why someone said no hospital. Don't see the dark-paneled room or hear the scissors. Don't listen to the whispered rumble, "The first time the bandages come off will be the worst." And please don't count how many days before the first set of bandages come off.
5. And don't think about why your grandmother didn't apologize or maybe you didn't hear her in your cavern of fear.
6. Don't contemplate how many things can burn you. Lightning, the sun, words.
7. When the day arrives, don't imagine you're ready. No one could be ready to see the skin on their forearm like ribbons. No one could be ready to feel that category of terror while awake, especially at a kitchen table, not a hospital, not a doctor's office.
8. Don't cry. Be brave.
9. Don't forget you were brave.
10. Don't, if possible, re-live this story out-of-nowhere many years later when you're perched on the edge of an exam table at the dermatologist, explaining how the oven in your rental apartment blasted hot air when you opened the door to check the chicken you were baking at impossible degrees. Steam, hotter than boiling water, shocked your right cheek bright pink. Luckily, you were wearing glasses. Luckily, you'll remember to never get your face too close to an oven again. When you start weeping as you tell your childhood story to the doctor, he turns away.
11. Don't imagine that even now you'll be able to decipher the hieroglyphs etched on your aging skin, the faded but indelible message from your grandmother's kitchen, inscribed on the day that you burned.
12. Do imagine she would have been proud of you, so many years later, you who have flown longer than Icarus, wings unmelted, to one day perhaps outshine the sun.
LM Fontanes tells stories in multiple genres and across oceans. Words in/upcoming The Bulb Region, Underbelly Press, Trash Cat Lit, Roi Fainéant, Frazzled Lit, Silly Goose Press, Temple in a City, Emerge Literary Journal, 100-Foot Crow, JAKE, Thomasonian, and long-listed for The Smokey Award.
BS: @lorifontanes.bsky.social
BS: @lorifontanes.bsky.social
