A total of seventeen hours of flight over three days found us half broken and drained at our doorstep. Our house looked strange.
All tagged pandemic
A total of seventeen hours of flight over three days found us half broken and drained at our doorstep. Our house looked strange.
Late Saturday afternoon, picked up my pills from the pharmacy a block away. That's all I can walk now.
I sneak the empty beer cans out to the recycling bin; lifting up some cardboard and the worst drawings the kids made, I hide the cans, evidence I'm not doing as well as it seems.
My interviewer has just emailed me that his wi-fi is terrible, and that our video call will now be a simple, old-fashioned phone call. So there’s no one to see that I’ve put on pants—
Pennies in the fountain reflecting the casino’s lights are incandescent copper. I sit by the water taking in the humans around me, some of them masked.
“We played Covid today.” He dipped his graham cracker in Nutella. I stopped with his milk half poured.
The windows are wet with dawn. My windshield wipers are old and leave streaks that make me regret my attempt at clarity.
Quickly, I open a file and pin some words to the page, plucking them out of the silence and getting them down, getting them down. I’m pausing to flesh out my embryonic thoughts when the noise begins and footsteps clatter up the stairs.
My daughter’s visit softened sterile surfaces of my home with a trail of mugs, plates, and debris, comforting signs of her presence. Our sympathetic bond assuaged my longing for connection, accumulated over months of pandemic isolation.
At five to four, Husband says, “Come outside. I fixed your snowshoes. I want you to try them.” I reply, “But I can’t, you know I have this other commitment.”
We have been hiding from the virus for a year now, and winter has kept us holed up inside for months.
Looking straight ahead and not too far back or too far forward – my strategy for dealing with the new normal. I straighten up, and the gut punch comes swiftly and unexpectedly.
And I just sent an email praising my coworkers for making it the first few weeks with no cases.
Penelope is a rat. She lives in my daughter's room and likes to sit on my shoulder and snuffle in my ear.