Shannon K. Winston
PANIC ATTACK IN THE SHOWER: A FUGUE
Water needles her skin. Her skin is full of needles,
water does nothing to soothe it. To soothe herself (her body?
her mind?), she counts slowly to five, ten, fifteen.
Fifteen months ago: her first panic attack,
the first time she felt as if her body were a stranger’s.
A stranger, her mother thinks as she showers her twenty-year
old daughter whose body shakes. The body quakes.
Whose body quakes? The mother’s hands falter,
then steady. Unsteady, my hands always shake,
the daughter confesses, naked in the shower to her mother.
To the mother, nothing matters but steadily moving the washcloth.
The blue washcloth moves slowly over the daughter’s legs,
arms, and breasts. Breasts, arms, legs—can motion calm
the nerves? There are the nerves and then the nerves
about the nerves. How to explain it? It, the thing the daughter
can’t name but only say: my legs are cold or the shakes
are so bad I can’t stand. She can’t stand
this feeling—the dizzy spells. She can’t hold a spoon or drink
anything without trembling, so she hides in her room.
Once, she hid in her room after her father said: you’re so
hairy it looks like a second pair of shorts. His short, biting
comments needled her, like the water that pricks her skin.
Is this the moment she will lose everything? Everything
spins, spins but she feels her mother washing her. Her hair
corkscrews down her neck Her neck is too hot, too cold.
Hot-cold. A grown woman being bathed by her mother.
By her mother, the grown woman stands so that her own mother
can wash her grown daughter’s face. My baby’s face,
the mother laments, I haven't done enough to protect you.
Naked in the shower, the daughter’s legs are numb, her chest is sticky.
Sticky: her panic is sticky and thick as felt. She’s felt this way for
months, for a lifetime. She downed Vitamin B12 and wine.
And ran and ran an ran. I will break my body before it breaks me.
Alone in the dark, darkness needled her like the water
rushing over her arms and between her legs. To the mother,
nothing matters but slowly moving the washcloth.
She is decades away, in a helicopter. In a hospital helicopter,
she held her daughter: her daughter’s body shook even then.
Even then, her hair smelled like soap. I will take care
of you, the mother whispered to the daughter.
The propellers knifed the air; the sound rushed over them like water.