Calcination

Sydney Baldwin
Class of 2026

Calcination

Yesterday was all orange. 

The morning starts with orange vomit in the toilet. It’s potentially stomach acid, but maybe an ulcer. I’m left to self diagnose until I meet a helpful doctor. 

It’s been over a year.

My boyfriend drives me to get an aura photography reading done—the third best option after doctor and self diagnosis. How it works: they snap a polaroid photo in which the color of your aura overtakes the image of your still body captured in time. 

My still body comes out leaking bright orange.

They give me a chart to interpret the meaning. Orange represents the sacral plexus, the lower abdomen to navel area.

There is a section labeled “negative qualities” in which you will find me in my orange aura defined as tending towards:

Over-indulgence in food or sex.

Sexual difficulties.

Confusion, purposelessness.

Jealousy, envy, desire to possess.

Uterine and/or bladder problems.

I think I am all of these things, I think: I am all orange.

We head back to the car and see orange tucked in the windshield.

A parking ticket. 

Here, orange costs $115 or a trip to court. 

My orange aura photography reading was $30, half the price of the copay I paid to see a doctor about my stomach acid and/or ulcer—a meeting which provided me with half as many answers. They didn’t give me any sort of chart or try to define my condition. 

I never know what to do with myself, I need defining.

There are no more helpful doctors. 

*

At a used bookstore, I go through the old postcards and posters.

I find an old poster of what appears to be a lesbian couple. One woman is lying in bed, the other is standing, kissing the one in bed.

In line to buy it, I realize it’s not a lesbian couple. It’s somehow what you’d imagine to be the exact opposite of a lesbian couple:

It’s Romeo and Juliet. 

I gather this from the small title at the bottom that says Juliet’s sickbed.

I buy it. The illustration is still beautiful.

When I get home, my instinct is to hang it up above my bed. 

I get an even bigger instinct telling me not to.

I fear putting an illustration of Juliet in her sickbed above my bed to be a bad omen.

I fear Romeo, kissing me in my misery.

And an illustration being drawn of this scene; our still bodies captured in time in which I’m being kissed as I lie there, sick and sexual. 

It’s all sexual, it doesn’t matter how sick you are. It actually makes it even sexier.

Sex appeal is useless when what you need is a helpful doctor and there’s no more helpful doctors. 

I feel like a conspiracy theorist.

I take a lighter and burn the poster of Juliet in her sickbed until the bed is no longer and Romeo and Juliet and everything turn to orange turn to ash.