Notches: Cervical

Notches: Cervical

 

Cervical bones sketch.

TRANSVERSE PROCESSES

The transverse processes are located at right angles to the junction of pedicles and the lamina. They provide a place for the back muscles to attach to the spine.

 For the most part, these are absent in the vertebra of the neck (the cervical spine). If present in the cervical spine they occur at the lowest level and are called a cervical rib. They may impair exiting nerve roots and cause pain.

You were simply coal to me.

A gift on Christmas morning for being ungrateful. Everything I had wanted, everything that I fantasized about before everything turned to the left.

Your silence, your exact absence filled the empty spaces, the never-visited places, leaving traces – of absolutely nothing.

You gave me –

Coal: in a Christmas stocking above the fireplace.

Coal: because I’m Jewish and don’t celebrate Christmas.

Coal: because we met sitting on the fireplace, you drinking someone’s dad’s expensive whiskey (on the rocks).

Coal. Corporate, quiet, contradictory coal.

Coal, because that’s just what I am –

a lump of coal.

 

Lamina diagram.

 

LAMINA

The lamina is the roof of the spinal canal that provides support and protection for the backside of the spinal cord.

He always knew her heart was empty, and that’s why he did it.

He would ask her questions too, to be nice, to reciprocate her inquisitive curiosity. But oh the whimsy! Besides, whenever asked anything about her past (Did you get along well with your grandmother? What did you have for breakfast?), she turned a bright firework red and quickly reversed the interrogation.

Haha. An empty suitcase for a heart. How simple to control, to fill with everything or nothing at all. Oh, the possibilities.

He would tell her anything, anything at all! And it worked! No light to go out behind her eyes, no structure in that skeleton to be befuddled with. A perfect girl she was.

She’d get in moods, though. Shades of blues, greens, where she couldn’t figure out why she was upset. A cycle of cyan, a turntable of turquoise. Being upset for not knowing why she was upset for being upset for not knowing why she was upset for being upset for

being

upset

for

not

knowing… why

Pedicles diagram.

PEDICLES

Each vertebra has two cylinder-shaped projections (pedicles) of hard bone that stick out from the back part of the vertebral body, providing side protection for the spinal cord and nerves. The pedicles also serve as a bridge, joining the front and back parts of the vertebrae.

As I waited on the ledge for your call, the sky turned pink. It looked like the concoctions I created with acrylic paints in art class because I couldn’t paint – mixtures of colors that began to look like vomit if you didn’t pay enough attention. It looked like ice cream soup.

I sat on my window ledge, watching the sky turn from a dirty pink to a dirty grey, because we live in the city where everything is dirty and smells like garbage during the summer because people think that garbage should live on the street.

Finally the grey turned into night. An illuminated, electric evening, because there are too many lights for the sky to actually get dark.

 
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