Matt Morgan
Sminker
A patient both smokes tobacco and drinks alcohol. Submitted by Dan Patterson.
Quietroar
The unexpectedly loud sound of your own heartbeat in a silent room, months after the monitors stopped.
Hopeshelf
The bathroom shelf where every partly used cream and miracle serum from a hopeful week quietly goes to expire. Submitted by Jan Davies.
Bathrim
Hopedrawer
The next set of words to arrive in the Dictionary all belong to one place: my new book, The Comeback Plan.
The book makes a simple argument. Survival is not the finish line. It is the starting line. What follows is the slow rebuilding of body, mind and sense of
Hopedrawer
The kitchen drawer where every half-finished bottle of supplements from a bad month quietly goes to retire.
Gladlag
The delay between everyone else's relief that you survived and the moment your own relief finally catches up.
Veilmurmur
The soft, hesitant voice of a patient asking if they're going to die.
Toastshift
The comforting waft of buttery toast drifting through a corridor.