Zombie Foot

[Ann Mintz]

It looked like a sunset on a stormy night, an ominous deep purple streaked with angry red.  Cheerful garnet toenails added a surreal touch of Hollywood glamour to toes dark as thunderheads.  My first impulse was to scrub them clean but soap and nailbrush can’t touch blackened blood dried under swollen skin.      

Three weeks later, the sunset has faded.   I should have photographed it right after I broke it, when it still looked like a special effect, like a prop in a zombie movie.        

[Mike Handley]

I once had a hunch... oh, well, never mind. There's no way I could avoid reading this. The title snagged me, and I ate every word like little pieces of brain.

[Kristine_ES]

i'm not sure i could have EVER been so kind in writing about something as painful as this sounds.

you certainly painted something in a way i'd never thought of... and hopefully it's eased up a bit for you now.  !!

[Gita]

I wanted to comment yesterday, but everything I thought of was too humorous (to me) and would have come across as unsympathetic. I think the impulse  to photograph body parts in extremis is the same one that makes people keep their kidney stones in a jar or (like me) ask the dentist for those wisom teeth.

[Joe Gensle]

ouch could i EVER relate, Ann! I took a picture of my foot in the emergency room, 11 fractures in the foot, and all 5 toes broken, and ouch ough ouch could I relate to your plight :/

[Ann Mintz]

Or simple wonder at how different a familiar part of the body can become.

[Bill Floyd]

This is a great telling, and an impulse we all share, I think.  Why?  Why do we want a record?  To remind ourselves of the fallibility of our physical bodies, or as reminder for us not to be so clumsy next time? :-)

[Ann Mintz]

That's exact;y how I felt about it--  didn't think I'd want to remember  it. And now that it looks like a foot again, I wish I had listened to my friends who told me to photograph it!

[bolton carley]

great title and great take on it.  i should have done the same when i broke my nose.  i took a few pics but wasn't in the mood to remember at the time.  glad it's healing though.