Consider the emptiness of a life without a choice or future. Consider Miranda, the young woman at the center of Katherine Anne Porter’s short story, “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.” Miranda is sick and alone in the hospital during the 1918 flu epidemic. Thousands around her are dying, including a soldier she feverishly thinks about—a relationship that may be more imaginary than real.

Porter writes, “She lay on a narrow ledge, over a pit that she knew to be bottomless, though she could not comprehend it… thinking, There it is, there it is at last, it is very simple; and soft carefully shaped words like oblivion and eternity are curtains hung before nothing at all.”

Life on the narrow ledge.

— May 2024 —