Synkroniciti is thrilled to welcome back writer and performer Margo Stutts Toombs of Houston, Texas, with “The Kidney Monster at Party City,” a whimsical and yet dead serious flash memoir inviting us to reinterpret the monstrous in our lives. After a satisfying day of shopping for Halloween decorations at Party City which culminated in purchasing a delightfully ghoulish monster for her home, Margo became extremely nauseous in the car as she drove away. This was the beginning of a bad episode of kidney stones. As she passed in and out of consciousness over the next week, her mind seized upon the monster.
“In my fevered dream world, I was a supervisor at a construction site with lots of stones traveling down a vertical spreadsheet of tasks. These tasks were things my body had to accomplish to heal itself. I didn’t know what these tasks were, but I felt confident that someone in my dream was on top of the operation. Was it the Monster?”
When we are sick, our minds often use dreams as a way to keep us going and give us symbols to help make sense of what is happening. The mind is capable of pulling in the strangest things in our vicinity to speak to us. Margo reminds us that, like her kidney monster, these things don’t need to be conventionally beautiful to provide meaningful support and help us recover.
Margo has a wonderful way with words and lovely comedic timing that often exposes softness and vulnerability. The way she weaves humor with darker emotions is unusual and mesmerizing, revealing a strategic way of dealing with mortality–if we can maintain our playfulness, pains and fears are easier to bear. There is an inkling of something beyond, of purpose and plot behind the scenes, even and especially when we can’t figure out what it is. Being curious and engaged is often better than certainty.
Read “The Kidney Monster” in Synkroniciti’s “Recovery” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
A self-proclaimed internal humorist, Margo Stutts Toombs creates and dwells in wacky worlds. She loves to perform her work at Fringe festivals, art galleries or anywhere food and beverages are served. Her poetry and flash pieces dance in journals, anthologies, calendars and chapbooks. Margo also loves to create videos. Sometimes, these videos screen at film festivals.
One of Margo’s favorite pastimes is co-hosting the monthly poetry/flash readings at the Archway Gallery in Houston, Texas. She would like to give a special shout-out to Cait Weiss Orcutt for her helpful and creative writing classes.