I thank my Thursday night writing group for creating such a safe space so I might write this. There are a few prompts in here, most notably “heal darkness” which became “Heel, Darkness!”
Traffic is heavy but moving swiftly in all six lanes when a siren rings out from behind. Suddenly the orderly commercial street becomes as chaotic as a bumper car ride, vehicles diving toward the curb at right angles to the front of Jenna’s hood, and yet it doesn’t phase her, she’s rolling with it, it’s okay. She watches the big red fire engine scream by.
Traffic resumes instantaneously, and Jenna laboriously makes her way across one lane, then the next, easing her auto, readying it to make a left turn two intersections down—and there! There, she’s done it, progressed undeterred, as if an emergency vehicle hadn’t disturbed her peace, then—bam!!—another siren—another swirling mass of darting insects, a centrifugal fugue of confusion, and the anxiety finally shoots up her throat, and she starts to hyperventilate. It’s an ambulance this time—what is happening? First a fire engine and now an ambulance—the nuns taught them as children to make the sign of the cross, to say a prayer at the first sign of trouble—a siren, a police car, a scream, squealing brakes. Tears stream down her face now, but the ambulance has passed. There was a bird this morning on the concrete near the pool in her backyard, a tiny fledgling, fully cloaked in feathers and fuzz, but helpless. Should she bring it inside? No—look—there is a parent bird—looking on from the plum tree—a mama or papa Dove hidden in the tree’s new equinox greenery, tiny shoots of leaves that replaced the blossoms that now litter the surface of the pool water. Google says this is natural, the parent bird will watch. Jenna frets that if the baby bird doesn’t make it, the parent will be more accepting that she will be.
I feel so helpless, so helpless, so helpless, so often, so often, in the morning and in the darkness. She wants to shriek “Heel, Darkness!” as if Sadness and Futility are twin dogs, Dobermans maybe—dogs she can train, dogs she can pull back, dogs that can be controlled somehow, with effort.
Jenna reaches the intersection and she turns toward the medical office where she’s made an appointment to get a Covid booster, even now at the end of flu season, because she is afraid they won’t have any new vaccines in the fall. She is afraid the new Secretary of Health and Human Services won’t plan well for the fall. There is so little we can control now.
Jenna drives home and her anxiety is throbbing in her throat and solar plexus and she doesn’t know why. She’d been doing so well, she’d gone over three months without a panic attack.
The traffic is smooth and orderly, but it doesn’t matter. The sky is melting in front of her, she is driving toward the edge of a cliff painted orange and red. The wind has come up, garbage cans are blowing over onto the asphalt. Jenna weaves down the street to avoid them. Is it my responsibility? she wonders. Do I need to pick them all up?
She pulls into her garage and closes the electric door. This is all she can handle.
Photo by Rohit Durbha on Unsplash