Maggie Stein had panic attacks the way some people have weather. They showed up. The temperature of her inside world changed. Then wandered off, no note. She was a musician. Not famous. Small clubs. Rooms full of strangers. They clapped politely, easier than leaving. One night in Victoria her heart exploded. It thumped loudly. She sat in the bathtub of the Super 8 motel. She decided she was tired of being afraid of her own body. That night she picked up her guitar, whispered a chord, the guitar seemed surprised. Then sang a line.

Heart running wild like a runaway train.
Breath gone again and again.

She felt the air shift. The universe nodded politely. She kept writing. Slowly. Like she was near an animal that scared easily.

If the room is spinning I will sing it still.
If the fear is loud I will hum until
It becomes something I can live with.

By the time she finished, her breathing was calm. Not perfect but calmer. Like someone turned down the volume on the part of her brain that shouted fire. The next time panic came, she hummed the new song. People stared at her on the ferry. It did not matter. The humming was a rope she held while the universe shook. She wrote more. Strange panic songs. They filled her journal. Friendly ghosts.

When my thoughts stampede like horses
I strum them back into the barn.

She played these songs onstage and people listened in a way that made her feel less like wallpaper. After one show a teenager said, “You sound like what I feel before I faint.”

She made an album Songs for the Storms. The day the album came out she was still a person with panic. But she was also a person with a collection of small musical boats. Whenever panic rose like a flood, she set one of the boats on the water and watched it float.