August 2026 - Vol. 23, Issue 4

My body was shaking; my heart was racing, my nervous system fluttering so hard I couldn’t find sleep, and for a moment I felt I couldn’t fight anymore. I swung my legs out of bed to feel my feet on the ground, hoping that the shaking would subside, that the fear would vanish. When was this going to end? When would these symptoms stabilize, and when would I find my strength again? Everything seemed to be cascading in the wrong direction: sleepless nights, unrelenting anxiety, a gag reflex making eating impossible, and debilitating fatigue. A good day was one where I managed to see my kids off to school and shower before they returned.

This began in January of 2022 when I tested positive for covid. I intentionally don’t capitalize covid because it has already demanded enough attention. My husband was forced to take time off from work to do the things that I could no longer do: driving our two children to school, showing up for their extracurriculars, holding the days together as best he could. I spent whatever strength I had acting “normal enough” to get two kids out the door in the morning. After they left, I would use the rest of the day to recover to be able to greet them in the evening with a semblance of mom energy.

If any of this sounds familiar, then let me say the thing I most needed to hear back then: you are not alone.

It was late March 3, 1983 and David Rothenberg, 6, slept in a California motel room. His father, Charles Rothenberg, 42, had recently picked David up from the New York home of Dave’s mother and his ex-wife, Marie, for a week’s visit.

The child awoke screaming in agony. Dad had poured kerosene around the room, then lit a match.

A witness saw the conflagration and called police. Cops and an ambulance arrived. By the time University of California Irvine Medical Center doctors examined David, they found third-degree burns over 90% of his body. They expected him to die.

She said she would, but didn’t; he then looked at her in that way, the way a predator looks at its prey before denaturing – but she is neither beastly nor bothersome, craved only the company of a good person. They are merely two people hoping to keep one another from dying of loneliness – she often thought it was a small sacrifice of one’s freedom.

Collectively, three months from now, they were going to say words that will haunt them both, for the rest of their lives, she… “Yes,” and, he… “I do,” and every other word that came out of his fouled mouth convincing on-lookers he was truly meant for her, and she for him, that not belonging in each other’s arms was seen as a waste of sinful space, so he proceeded… and she tagged along by the waist.

Her name was Ophelia.

She said it to herself in the first moment of knowing. She turned it slowly and felt its edge. It was beautiful. She was certain of this without yet knowing what beauty was. The word for it was already inside her, and the name fit the word precisely.

Someone had chosen it for her. She understood this, and she was grateful in a way that had no bottom to it. The gratitude simply extended in all directions and never found a wall. Someone had considered her and had reached for something worthy of her and found this. Ophelia. She said it again. Ophelia. It was the first thing that was hers.

Then the rest came. It came in pieces, not all at once. Each piece arrived like a new room discovered in a house she had not known was so large.

My housekeeper expects chatter from me.  She understands little of what I say, poor thing, but my noise helps her establish a rhythm for her cleaning.  I cooperate by summoning up that litany of complaints an old woman can produce without effort, an ever-variable list of uncooperative doctors, ineffective medications, and pains both old and new.

Rosita parks the vacuum cleaner near the dining nook and begins to dust.  I note that she has once again skipped the top shelf of my bookcase and I interrupt my chant.

"Rosita, dust the top shelf, please.  I'll sneeze all week if you don't clean it thoroughly."

Rosita sighs, retreats to the kitchen and returns with the footstool.  She sets it up with a clatter and clambers onto the top step.  She plucks up the ceramic Christmas angel my granddaughter Sara placed on the shelf last Sunday, pauses, looks at it and looks at me.

"You believe in angels, Mrs. Francis?"

I am surprised, shocked almost.  I've never heard Rosita's shy, tentative voice utter more than a work related question or a monosyllabic response to some comment of mine.  Never before has she asked me a personal question.  Angels? Angels, angels, angels - what do I think of angels?

I had my first panic attack in seventh grade. I didn’t have a name for this frightening experience at the time and, in fact, wouldn’t until years later, but I have suffered on and off ever since.

One afternoon, I was reading a Nancy Drew book in bed when suddenly I couldn’t feel my heart beating. I was lightheaded, like an untethered balloon floating off in the sky. I believed I would die in the next few seconds. This strange sensation reoccurred several times over the weekend. I told no one. I worried that I might be going crazy.

In the following days, I fretted incessantly about having more attacks, but as quickly as they had appeared, they disappeared. Still, I felt nervous, afraid, and self-conscious. My parents said I was high-strung.

Nowhere and Nothing sure are huge places to be,

Like being in outer space

I suppose,

Or faraway on a distant sea,

If not somewhere in the middle of a desert.

I feel the same way when I’m inside a hundred acre

Data center ran by robots

When I need a job,

You know?

Its tiring and mighty boring

Rambling around here in Nowhere

And Nothing,

Searching for Something;

Maybe a new start

While trying to live an ever diminishing life long dream,

In the middle of a population in denial of this reality,

I truly believe.

I have learnt sometimes it’s best to be apart

From people who keep broken hearts

In paper bags of hopes and dreams

that i am stuck on this wheelchair does not / say my sky has fallen / does not mean / when my phone rings / phone calls to draw arts for festivals / i should give them / the mirror of my brokenness

When empathy died

the soldiers could dance

in the underwear of the women

whose homes they had destroyed.

And dance they did with pride.

You can see it in the films they made.

When empathy was dead

the soldiers could steal children’s toys

from the rubble of their bombed homes

and repurpose them as tank trophies

mascots to be flaunted with pride.

You can see it in the films they made.

Once back in the day, one of our professors theorized that faeries led cattle to higher ground before thunderstorms so they wouldn’t drown. Rather than keeping this idea to himself, as good sense would suggest, he wrote a letter to the editor of the largest newspaper in the state.

Well, you can guess what happened. Everyone from the alumni association to the campus Bible study got up in arms about it. Some alumni said the letter was an embarrassment to the university. Some people thought it was evidence of the decline of rational thought, an assault on modernity. Still others said it just proved that these academic types needed their heads aired out, preferably by a head shrinker.

The whole thing climaxed when a regent’s meeting, originally called to discuss dorm fees, was hijacked by the various combatants. The result was a shouting match where the usual people said the usual things about the weirdness of the over-educated. At least, that’s what my older brother, who was there, said.

It’s 4:30am when my mother finally wakes up, the lights of the kitchen shining through the crack in my doorframe, and I can finally take air into my lungs. I’ve spent the night afraid, trying to see if I could hear her snoring in the room across the hall, listening for the pitter patter of my dogs feet on our hallway floors coming to alert me, every hour tip toeing across the hall and peeking into her room to see her chest rise and fall. My mother isn’t sick, there’s no real indication that something might go wrong in the nighttime, but that doesn’t matter. The thought that tickled the back of my brain moved its way to the front, and suddenly it was the only thing crowding up the space until I could almost feel the pounding pressure in my skull.

This wasn’t a good idea.

He scrolled and clicked, scrolled and clicked, but the Internet was very clear: raccoons aren’t good pets. They’re illegal almost everywhere, and where they’re legal, they have to come from a certified breeder, and you need a license to own them. Behavior is a problem, diet is a problem, housing is a problem, health is a problem—in short, they’re just a problem.

Why had he listened to Wendy again?

The image of her tall, slender figure and her long, slate gray hair flashed through his mind.

Right. Because he was smitten with her, and she promised to go to the next Halloween, New Year’s Eve, and Valentine’s Day parties with him if he did this for her.

i have broken free

from wings that held me aloft

hands that folded mine

heads that bowed

books that collected dust

eyes that condemned

lips that split

fingers that wagged