Five Points Vol. 24, No. 1
Sample Content
Kirun Kapur
The Breaking Word (and the Banana)
I’m a person who always imagines what the other person is feeling in any situation. The doctor not looking at me? Perhaps it is too hard to look at anyone as you break open their life with the worst kind of news. Perhaps this was her fifth such call in the day and she couldn’t bear making eye contact while delivering one more bundle of terrible. She was young, after all. Younger than me. On the one occasion we’d met, she’d reminded me of my students, the ones who arrive in my classroom freshly showered, leaning their field hockey sticks against the wall, worried, hardworking, arranging themselves to take the best possible notes. I’m inclined to adore these young anxious ones, to want to protect them. But, now, a silver bolt of—what was it? Anger? Sadness? Disappointment? Horror?—shot through me. I wanted to say, Here’s today’s lesson: when things can’t be fixed or changed, what we can do is look a person in the face.