Knife Holograms and Pandemic Knightmares

Lauren Saetern

source: Anna Rex

My mother came one inch away from stabbing me with a knife
and only a few hardy souls believe me.

            “she wasn’t like that before”
                                    “it was just a joke”
“she’s your mom”
                                    “well it’s probably the pandemic”

These are the responses I get.
And so all that kept going through my head
as I laid down and stared at the whirring ceiling fan for 4:33 was:
Am I safe?

If I’m not safe around my parents, is there any place to go?
I only feel safe inside my home during the pandemic.
I’m afraid to take a walk in bright daylight
on sidewalks often scarred by violence.

I’m afraid to hug other people
because I don’t know when they might turn on me
and then say:
“It was just a joke.”

But a lot of the time, I walk on through the city streets anyway.
I risk it, grasping pepper spray firmly in one fist and keys tight in the other. The smell of freshly cut grass mingles
with the scent of an overflowing dumpster wafting
from a nearby apartment complex.
Sweat drips down

my forehead as I think to
myself:

Am I safe?  

How am I supposed to go back to law school
and take a class on capital punishment,
the death penalty,
while we are all risking our lives to study it?  

I just want peace.
To be at ease.

But I cannot stop wondering:

Am I safe?

Lauren Savoie is a law student at Louisiana State University, award-winning writer, and author of the novel Chimera in New Orleans. Lauren received her MFA in Creative Writing with a fiction emphasis from Northern Arizona University in 2018. In 2015, while attending Loyola University New Orleans, an excerpt from Chimera in New Orleans received the Dawson Gaillard Writing Award. She currently resides in Baton Rouge, LA with her husband and two cats. @LaurenSavoie5