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Showing posts from March, 2015

ORANGE PEEL

ORANGE PEEL, BY SUSHMA JOSHI I did not think I would live to be 75. But here I am, in 2050, walking through the burning trash piles of Kathmandu, the fine mesh of Super-Medtex face mask failing to keep away the dioxin and the carbon monoxide from my lungs. I draw in that smell of burning plastic with a shudder: I must enter the Pharma Kiosk on the way back home, and take a double dose of asthma spray, and a fifteen minute hook-up to the Easy-Breath Tank. Otherwise I would have to call the ambulance to get me home. The sun sets over the horizon—through the black cloud that hangs overhead perpetually, I can see the sun, like a pale moon, slipping down the mountains. For a moment, the smell feels particularly acrid, as if its weighed down with lead. I feel faint, all of a sudden, and wonder if I panic if I will fall into one of those red, glowing piles of garbage. I can see a body or two, people whose lungs have collapsed as they walked, tossed carelessly amongst the plastic Wai-Wai wrapp