June 2026 - Vol. 23, Issue 3

When Nina was happy, she would cry. Not joyful tears that seeped out among smiles, but great racking sobs and raw primordial howls that left her shaking, damp and breathless. When she was angry, her words would sound to others like nurturance, care, and love, in their purest, most untainted forms. Whatever feelings stormed about inside her, their very opposites projected from her face, her voice, her movements, no matter how carefully she tried to stop them.  Excitement expressed itself as dread. Earnest appreciation came out contemptuous, mocking.

The only people who sought her out were those she could not stand. She found it difficult to lay down boundaries so that people listened.

glowing cherry within the sharp teeth of dysfunctional rat trap

free-flowing river behind chained-up gate with barbed wire crowns

extended hang nails blooming new shreds of skin to rip raw

dual-factor authentication with second-by-second refreshed passwords

I am grateful for Red beads.

The first thing that happens when I arrive is a call to the blood bank: “The lady of the hour is here at the hospital now! Please start prepping her units.” The nurse then lines theapheresis machine with miles of clear tubing and tightly screws the ends to the joint in my chest.I can feel this alien plastic track as it moves through my veins, depositing into the superior vena cava deep under my collarbone; deep in my beating core.

In this our thrice weekly ritual, she makes eye contact through her clouded shield and jokes that my medical waste must make up half of the world's collective trash. The scanning of my bracelet and setting of her sterile field, her movements are routine and normal, like shopping for groceries. Another arrives by her side and suddenly my numbers are cross checked per protocol:

MRN: 0-2-0-5-4-7-0-5-5?

0-2-0-5-4-7-0-5-5.

Contacted New Life Christian Fellowship Church—I must let Jesus help me. Not yet (prayers). Contacted Baptist Church—I must let Jesus help me. Not yet. Contacted Methodist Church—they don’t do this. Catholic Church—one never answered; another said I can’t be possessed and find help on the Internet. I said I’m running out of options. I don’t know what this thing is, but it is inside me and won’t leave. Shamed, he said he’d come. I said I don’t believe in God, but I do in a higher power. Shouldn’t have said that. Disqualified. Yet a Catholic Deacon did come and blessed all the rooms in my apartment plus me with Holy Water. Didn’t work. I found out the Catholic Church has a back door unlocked so the faithful can get Holy Water. I brought a half-gallon glass jug and filled it. With that and a paint brush I splattered the entire apartment, drank some (taste awful), took a washcloth bath in it. I put a small glass of some on my nightstand by my bed. When I began making noises with my mouth, I reached my fingers into the jar and brushed my teeth. My mouth made a raspberry noise. (Didn't work.) I lost this round.

The last thing Miriam wanted to do was open the boxes.

Cass had organized them by decade—a system so rational it was almost unkind. 1988–1995 in the top row. 1995–2003 in the middle. The bottom row unlabeled, just debris from the closet, pushed toward the wall by years of accumulation. Miriam stood in the doorway of what had been Cass’s bedroom for four years, briefly, before Cass moved to Portland, and before that had been the room where Miriam worked for twelve years, and before that the guest room, and before any of that—its original designation—the room where Miriam had spent three weeks in the summer of 1994 trying to understand what was happening to her body.

“You don’t have to stay,” Cass said. She was kneeling by the middle row, extracting a shoebox. “I can do this.”

You are of more value in the joy of your cross-stitching than in the struggle of your ironing.

— Abraham and Esther Hicks

That’s why I don’t buy clothes that need

ironing and my framed cross-stitch competes

for wall space with a dozen canvases

painted by-numbers, not free-hand.

Princess Kate crashed my IV

in a dream once. I got kicked out

half-way through my saline.

I was salty, but not as salty

as I should have been.

I wheel into my grandmother's home, my wheels slightly squeaking. I am greeted with love and hugs by everyone.

I go take a steamy shower and get into comfy sweats. It is winter and very cold, though not enough for snow, because it is raining.

Despite the chill in the air and the pouring rain, my family is gathered on a covered porch to enjoy a feast.

My grandmother asks me about my diagnoses. I explain Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Dyspraxia, and Hypermobility. She becomes irate and spits out, "Is that all?" No, this is not all, but I am keeping things short. It is safer this way.

The row of dream trees leads to the old decayed Queens asylum

on the border of here and long island nowhere--

now closed for years, decrepit with rats and rot

where you once stood in line for your little paper cup of pills

in the suicide ward of inscrutable screams and screaming silences.

This is a story about the transition from walking without assistance to a cane and how a walker lessened inhibitions, stereotypes, and false images. I was never a graceful child. Thus, the “G” in my name applies to my graceful way of seeing the world from a different viewpoint. The ground floor, you might say. Age increased the number of times I fell, slipped, tripped over real and imagined things as the light shifted, and found a solid object loving my nose, hands, or knees. I lost my naïve, virgin image when I fell in the middle of the street, and several people rushed to help, saying, “Are you all right, old woman?" Or, "Ma'am, do you need a hand up?” I wasn’t embarrassed but rather amused that Y2K was real and time had indeed stopped and messed with my life. The EMTs insisted I have my knee and arm checked, as they were concerned about possible fractures. My daughter was called as I was being examined and took me home with plenty of bandages and warnings not to fall again, get a cane, and call my primary. On Monday morning, I called my primary care provider. and was seen later that day. His first was to refer me to physical therapy and have me pick up a cane at the clinic’s pharmacy. I cried, I laughed, I fumed that four days after my 46th birthday I was considered old and frail, and I used the cane.

The butt got closer to me.

Then closer.

Even closer, getting bigger as it got nearer to me.

So big now.

I couldn’t see anything else.

Well, I couldn’t see, or hear, but I could sense it.

Giulia stored the placenta in a white freezer drawer next to frozen anchovies, the clinic misplaced her discharge papers and demanded proof the birth even took place. A printed tag clung to the tissue with soggy glue: baby female, 2.1 kilos, transfer pending. Near the sink, her son Luca scraped charred rice from a pan using an expired bank card.

Often others just do not listen.

My words don’t always come out right.

I feel a strong bond with the famous First Officer.

I suffered a severe stroke

and feel I am in a horrifying nightmare.

Each  of us in different worlds.

As Becky passed through to the outer darkness, the serif on guard paid her no attention. Engaged in angelic business with the rest of the heavenly host, the angelic being viewed Becky’s leaving with celestial indifference. There were no laws against sneaking out of Heaven; for such laws should not be needed.

Without the walls, Becky took some time for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. For good measure, she picked up a stick, reminiscent of the cane she’d used in her times before the restoration of her sight after the judgement. Then, she’d used a cane when she’d been between guide dogs.

i knew this was fucked from the very start.

my first memory (deduced through traces left in the rest, the broken toys and spiteful recountings) was being ordered to watch my baby sister while our mother showered. i was dumped into her crib (a scene that was quite beneath me, as a four-or-five-year-old) and left with the tacit understanding this was my duty. as the eldest. the least-favorite. my value was only in protecting the perfect one. too young to disobey or form opinions.

i knew i wasn’t sane from the very start.

Sometimes I don’t know how to separate my M.E.

from the violence that left it growing in my body

an unwanted, destined never to bear, pregnancy

a horror vivisecting me, this child no changeling

This illness that left me with undesired regularity

wrapped round my womb to run it like clockwork

as if I ever planned to birth anything from there

the pain cutting through me, blinding at its worst