Devonne Brown

The Fatigue: Mikail Zablodski, 2022

“Ophelia before she sank,” Tara said. She admired the new painting from her shrink’s couch. “She looks tired. Treading water. She fell asleep like a whale, vertical. No wonder she drowned. Maybe Hamlet just drove her to exhaustion and it wasn’t suicide, she was just tired. All those flowers in the water…She was in a fancy bath, not a creek like the other painting.”

“That’s not Ophelia. Ophelia had red hair,” said the shrink. She was so patient.

“Sure she did, in the famous painting. In that one, her eyes are open and she floats with her arms at her side, open, like she’s been crucified. Broken hearts will do that to you. Haven’t you heard of artistic license?”

“That’s not Ophelia, Ophelia’s heavy green velvet dress pulled her down to Posieden’s castle. Took her directly to his lair where they became lovers,” said the shrink. She sounded tired.

“Now you’re making shit up. You’re supposed to listen to your patients. Doesn’t my interpretation of the painting count? Isn’t it supposed to be a hanging Rorshact test? Don’t my words give you insight into my psyche? Aren’t you supposed to adjust my meds because of my interpretation?”

“It’s not Ophelia. It’s a portrait of me. Don’t you see the resemblance?” asked the shrink. She half-smiled beside the picture, mugging.

Oh shit. If she thought that was a portrait of her, she had no business with a prescription pad. She was more delusional than I was.

“It’s not me, me. It’s how I feel. I’m exhausted. I want to be weightless in warm water buoyed by the aroma of peonies, violets, and roses. I want what I hear every day to be lifted from me, I want to be weightless and serene, to float, to bob without effort in the warm waters of the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.” My shrink needed one or two of the drugs she gave me if she had those kinds of thoughts, or was that normal? 

That picture was Ophelia before she sank, it wasn’t suicide, unless it was.