The wound on my mother’s neck is fathomless. In it, blood, pus, and remnants of a cyst. She asks me to bandage it. Asks if I’m too dumb to handle it. When she says “dumb,” I imagine the word outlined in red, furious from burst stitches. Frowning, she closes her eyes and bends forward. In this position I could easily hurt her the way she chooses to hurt me. Instead, I cut tidy pieces of medical tape and make sure that her thick hair doesn’t get in the way. I lay down gauze and cover it, her wound, my pain.
Emily Hall's prose appears in Passages North, 100 Word Story, Gooseberry Pie Lit, Five Minutes, and Cherry Tree. She lives in North Carolina with her husband. “Taking Care” is the winner of our CARE contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.