Personal Statement

Opening Paragraph

I have more poems and a few vignettes to share with you soon, but this is actually what I worked on today. It goes on for two pages and 688 words, but I shall just post an opening paragraph from the draft.

It looked like a grapefruit birthing itself through my torso. Immediately admitted to the hospital, I received emergency surgery for a deadly spider bite. I couldn’t bear to look at the wound then, but photos revealed what looked like a sedimentary canyon of skin, fat, muscle, and blood, ten inches across and two inches deep. As I made daily visits to a wound clinic to be stuffed with stiff, silver gauze, I was fired from my job at a deli and dumped by my live-in girlfriend of three years.