“Dispatch from a Pandemic: Chicago,” by Peggy Shinner (Fiction ’94)

“Dispatch from a Pandemic: Chicago,” by Peggy Shinner (Fiction ’94), was recently featured in Another Chicago Magazine. Read an excerpt below:

Dispatch from a Pandemic: Chicago

Do we all have secrets now?  A friend of mine is unspeakably happy, because she’s fallen in love during the pandemic.  She’d been widowed over thirteen years ago (not a term I’ve ever heard her use but what is the term when you’re queer and grieving?), C. died of breast cancer, and now R. is bleary-eyed with sex and wonder.  She and N., her new love, hold hands at the table.  They are building raised garden beds. They wear bandanas that make them look jaunty and their faces are alive with pleasure.  R. is an activist, and before the primary she, N., and others hung a banner over the Eisenhower Expressway urging people to VOTE.  And my secret, in this time of vigilance and side-eye surveillance?  I resist the rules.  I wear a mask, but only sometimes.  No when I’m running and walking, yes when I’m shopping.  I feel confused and defiant.  I don’t always want to be trying to evade death…

Read the rest of this piece here: https://anotherchicagomagazine.net/2020/05/10/dispatch-from-a-pandemic-chicago-by-peggy-shinner-2