M.W. Brooke

M.W. Brooke is a queer writer originally from the American Southwest, now living in Portland, Oregon. Her work has appeared in Atticus Review, CHEAP POP, and Waxwing Magazine. She is on submission with her first novel and hard at work on her second. You can find her at www.mwbrooke.com or @mwbrooke on Twitter.

CATGUT by M.W. Brooke

Most days your mother languishes on your couch watching reruns of Law & Order. Doctors can’t explain what’s wrong with her brain. You drive her to appointment after appointment between harp lessons—a merry-go-round of CAT scans, MRIs, acupuncture, marijuana, experimental doses of ketamine, prescriptions for epileptics. Nothing calms the tension behind her eye sockets, like a harp string constricting under the chill of night. During rehearsals in third grade, your fourth octave C string snapped from the tuning pin and whipped across your eye. The harp yowled in your arms, a feral cat too close to human hands. Harp strings…

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