In Semezdin Mehmedinovic’s beautiful and poignant book My Heart (see my full review here), he mentions a note Anton Chekhov made for a story he apparently never wrote. It is about a man whose entire life is focused on his heart disorder: what he eats, what he does, who his friends are, what he talks about, what people think of him. Then a specialist informs him that his heart is actually just fine. The premise made me smile. I decided to write the story myself. And the folks of the Lazuli Literary Group have published my version, “With Apologies to Anton Chekhov,” in their fifth annual print anthology from Azure: A Journal of Literary Thought. I am honored to be included, and delighted by the delicate, wry, and elegant illustration provided by Evgenia Barsheva (whose images accompany each story). And I do thank Chekhov and Mehmedinovic for the smile and the spark that lit up this little exercise for me. Look for the book at bookshop. org.