Floods

Up inside the cells that rattle against vessels that seek out new arteries to invade, the whisper of an anomaly can be found. So infinitesimally small, held inside the pocket of a nucleus. It springs up from that single cell, pushes against its walls and begins to spread. It forms like the mold on basement floorboards with too many floods, like the wax beneath a candlestick only used for special dinners grown scarce with time, with children moving out and parents moving apart. It happens over time, a plodding of slippery toes forming the tiniest of puddles, drips and drops that couldn’t possibly survive the sunlight, yet somehow do. They slip past, unnoticed by those too busy noticing so many millions of other things that slide against the screens at their fingertips, the blue reflected in dark eyes. The fall, then, is never stopped. Wrists are not grabbed. Children are not pulled back from an edge, no Catcher waiting in the Rye. The puddle becomes a pool, a stream, a lake, an ocean. The cell crumples and wonders how. The anomaly smiles and moves on to the next.

*Direct reference to J.D. Salinger’s infamous "Catcher in the Rye"