Beside me on the sofa, my daughter is playing a video game. Only her eyes and fingers move. When I ask her how her day was, she doesn’t answer. Or maybe my middle-aged ears have lost her frequency. On the screen, another version of her in a glittering lilac bodysuit is slaying skeletons and scaling cliffs. Set limits, they tell me. Keep trying to connect in the real world; she’ll come around. I’m tired of picking my battles with a trained warrior. She has the controller, but I hold the remote. I press the up arrow. Beside me, her body flickers. On the screen, her bodysuit deepens to violet. I wave at the screen; she waves back. She looks so happy. I keep pressing up up up, until beside me on the sofa, the daughter I always wanted fades away.

Angeline Schellenberg is the author of the Manitoba Book Award-winning series of linked poems about autism, Tell Them It Was Mozart (Brick Books, 2016), and the KOBZAR-nominated elegy collection, Fields of Light and Stone (University of Alberta Press, 2020). Angeline’s work was selected for Best Microfiction 2024. She hosts the Speaking Crow open-mic poetry series in Winnipeg, Canada, where she lives with her husband, two children, and rescue dog. A contemplative spiritual director, photographer, and mudlark, Angeline will launch her third poetry book, Mondegreen Riffs (At Bay Press), in September 2024.

Header photograph and artwork by Jordan Keller-Wilson