My panic attacks

are like ice in winter, how

you don’t need ice in winter,

how the winter is enough,

but the steps are covered,

waiting to take a body and

hurdle it, hurt it, heard it.

I don’t know the language.

It’s about losing language.

It’s about lowering myself,

the feel of falling, a sort of

failing. My teeth become

ice. Or maybe it’s my

ice that becomes teeth. It

happens more frequently

now, the slipping, a slap

in the throat, a worry like

my insides are my outsides.

A therapist told me to write

about it, to get it out, but

I have no insides. I only

have the snow in my chest,

the trauma that comes on

so fast. I’m blessed. I

know. I’m alive. It’s

best to just be thankful,

even when you can’t

breathe, like now, like

then, like the then before

the last then. Back when

I was ten. When the mines

took my grandfather. When

the lake took my brother.

When I thought we would

all be alive forever. And

it feels like I’m the only

one remaining. The wind

in my guts. This wish to

have them all come back.

Ron Riekki has been awarded a 2014 Michigan Notable Book, 2015 The Best Small Fictions, 2016 Shenandoah Fiction Prize, 2016 IPPY Award, 2019 Red Rock Film Fest Award, 2019 Best of the Net finalist, 2019 Très Court International Film Festival Audience Award and Grand Prix, 2020 Dracula Film Festival Vladutz Trophy, 2020 Rhysling Anthology inclusion, and 2022 Pushcart Prize. Right now, Riekki's listening to "Suicide is Painless (From the 20th Century-Fox film M*A*S*H*)" by Johnny Mandel.