Blowfish

By Barbara Krasner

PROMPT—During Covid-19 ...

I did not bake sourdough bread. I did not take up knitting. I did not miss going out to dinner or to the movies. I did not miss going on campus and taking on the germs of my many students. I did not miss wearing a bra, dying my hair, wearing socks or shoes. I did not miss filling the gas tank twice a week or cursing out other drivers.

I scored eighty percent as an introvert on the Myers-Briggs test. I liked being alone. I liked being home. I liked ordering Door Dash. I liked catching up on Hallmark’s Christmas movies. I liked sleeping later and staying up longer. I liked a predictable schedule that always had me home for meals. I liked losing weight.

Until the first Moderna booster, a few weeks after my gallbladder removal surgery. The booster that triggered bullous pemphigus vulgaris, a rare incurable auto-immune skin disease. I stayed off campus as immunocompromised, my swollen face and eyes filling the Zoom square. On 100 mg of prednisone daily, the itching and scratching eased. The lesions cleared up.

But now they’re back and I don’t have the pandemic as an excuse to stay home. The blistered lesions make it uncomfortable to wear a bra, leg rashes too raw to wear socks. The curse of prednisone prevails, wreaking havoc on my diabetes that now requires five injections a day, Porky Pig feet that require a walker. I do not bake sourdough bread and I do not knit.

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Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies from Gratz College where she teaches in the graduate program. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared in more than sixty literary journals. She writes from Somerset, New Jersey.