Bird cam: a pair of hatchlings squat inside the twiggy nest while the mother hawk perches on top of a metal rail, fanning her tail feathers beside the spring green
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Somebody’s trip to Bali
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A turtle begins to cross the road with intention then somebody picks the turtle up and carries the turtle across the road then this person stands at the guardrail, holding the turtle in both hands before they reach out over the water
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So what is the tipping point when what might be adorable in singular becomes worrisome or even menacing when it arrives in multitudes? Essentially when does a group become a swarm
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Nobody is using the word monsters, that would be ridiculous
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A woman beside a turtle positions her fingertips on the turtle’s shell
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Take a deep breath
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A map of the country. Arrows point westward and northward. Red circles = services are down (unconfirmed). Yellow circles = barricades are up (unconfirmed). Orange circles = sightings (unconfirmed). Orange triangles = levitation (unconfirmed). Orange squares = destroyed (unconfirmed) 
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The perfect everyday work bag. Four colors. Shop
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14 years ago, a sitcom in Syracuse premiered
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Recommended reading: War of the Worlds, Ways of Seeing, Frankenstein, Regarding the Pain of Others, Annals of the Former World, The Voyage of the Beagle, Black Hole Survival
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How do we turn dialogue
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What a difficult thing for which to provide commentary, as we are not appearing to have the same experiences during such “effluences.” In the present footage, for instance, I see a plume of green extending from the horizon line like a cloud but a cloud that scrapes across the ground so slowly and with such great intent, though once that green solidifies, then — well in the comments, tell me
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A turtle beside a woman positions its fingertips on the woman’s shell
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The question, really — is a broken reality fixable? Or does a break lead to a new and different reality or realities, in which case
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Monkeys in trees, monkeys on the ground, monkeys on the curving boardwalk, monkeys piled onto the stone statue of a god, monkeys nursing their pups, monkeys balancing on a man’s shoulder, monkeys lifting and lowering
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Vapor, elbows, the sidewalk, the sky
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I don’t know, I looked outside and it wasn’t fucking there. The tree. All the trees. They weren’t there. They were just gone. They were fucking gone
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A public service announcement about the importance of identifying and protecting the monarch
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Can the absence of something prove its existence?
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As a working historian, I’d like to now place the current events into an epistemological context. We may want to believe that a shared reality has been a constant throughout both modern and ancient history, but that’s merely a story we tell ourselves. There are numerous examples in our past when a multitude of groups observed an event or events in real time yet came to radically different interpretations. Take any civil war or revolution or reformation or sub-reformation. The difference here: what’s happening now isn’t interpretation   
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A sunflower sea star unfurls
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Ice bubbles in Pennsylvania
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Your Wednesday Wellness tip
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Yet was it a violent force to begin with? Or did we transform what it was into a violence because of how we met the force when it arrived?
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The secret to stress-free travel
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It was right here. You can see where the roots were, right? Those holes over there? It used to go up, I don’t know, 40 or 50 feet
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Snow falling locally and leisurely, wide white flakes
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Yesterday, I woke up
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State emergency services advises individuals in affected areas to:
* shelter inside
* wear a face mask or respirator
* secure the premises
* reduce exterior visibility 
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It has become difficult to write dystopias, fantasy, or any form of literature without sounding naive
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How would you like to receive a letter
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Revealing teeth
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Shelter inside, mask up, windows closed, blinds closed, don’t
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A woman walks out of the frame
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It would be useful to know what is happening
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Stay inside, mask up, windows
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Stay
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Break
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What
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There
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Red
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What
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Hand
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(low battery warning)

They’re trying to help us. What if we became
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Bird cam: empty nest, rain 
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I feel like a sense of narrative has been destroyed among other
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Don’t believe what you
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Fractured house, roof on the ground, the aluminum siding rendered
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The rain isn’t rain (low battery warning)
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Trees holding rope
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It appears this world got tired of pretending
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Enormous tracks
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A turtle (low battery warning) being
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I have started writing on
(power down)

Debbie Urbanski is the author of the novel After World (Simon & Schuster, 2023), the collection Portalmania (Simon & Schuster, 2025), and a lot of essays and short stories. She lives and hikes in Central New York. Find her online at debbieurbanski.com