I’m in quarantine again.

House-bound; stuck; alone.

But I’m not alone now: everyone is here too. I hear from old friends, new friends, groups I’d given up on.

In a week, I probably do more than I could in a month before.

For:

It’s not accessibility when everyone uses it.

Not special needs when everyone needs it.

I miss going out: it scares me again.

I fear when my needs are once more ‘special’.

But I want to leave.

We raise our spirits with a song. The campfire’s warmth can’t compare to that which passes between us; it is as though all the chill in the world can be kept at bay.

“I’d die for you guys,” I say in a quiet moment, before the dawn of the last day breaks.

I would.

I didn’t remember the warmth of the sun.

The song of the birds; the caress of the wind; the fragrance of the air.

Like a wave, it crashes through us: Leaves us drenched in its immensity.

Its beauty.

Slowly, normal life resumes.

I don’t remember the warmth of the sun.

It’s June. Or December. Time doesn’t really matter anymore after you stop working--days and months are simplified to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Plain granola crumbs, brown salad, cheap overcooked chicken.

I emerge outside. The weather is hot, or maybe cold. Either way, I’m pale, malnourished. During the many months of quarantine, I manage to graduate college online. Virtual graduation. I throw my fake hat up in the air and the Dean shakes my digitalized hand, squirting a glob of hand sanitizer as he moves on to the next video caller.

I don’t have a job--perhaps I won’t have one for years. I emerge outside, in the tentatively buzzing city, as someone who will need to beg for someone else’s job. On my hands and on my knees. I’ll be wearing gloves and knee pads, obviously. The guy telling me no will wear a mask, and I will pretend that I didn’t understand him. Thank you, I will say. I really needed this.

My college girlfriend breaks up with me. Frankly, it is straight out of nowhere. She is quarantined in her apartment and I am quarantined in mine and we Facetime constantly, repeating to ourselves that we are stronger than the virus. “I’ve never wanted you so badly,” I remember saying.

A long pause.

“I think,” she says, “I’m learning to live without you.”

I know that most college relationships are destined to end, but it’s supposed to be messy, drawn out; someone moving to the other side of the country, an affair, a secret-- not a clinically clean cut. I drive to her apartment at two in the morning during quarantine and she refuses to let me in. It isn’t safe. I could be infected, or maybe she is. Perhaps she is afraid that we would both get sick, unable to care for one another. Dying together, apart.

I emerge outside, and the streets are clean, not out of love, but out of fear. Nature is beautiful; the parks are exactly the same. Someone had maintained the bushes, the wild grass. Roaming about, I visit the cemetery. I feel bigger than usual, painfully aware of every step I take.

My grandmother is dead, years ago from cancer, before the pandemic. I kneel at her tombstone which is cleaner than anything else on earth and find myself afraid to touch it. Who else might have touched her grave? What horrible bacteria is stuck to the engravements of her name?

I leave after an hour, ashamed. It’s raining. Or maybe it’s snowing. I have no idea the month, the season, or the year. If I should be carrying an umbrella or wearing a parka. Only people with jobs and girlfriends and grandmothers are capable of keeping track of these things. I am unprepared for the weather. My body is naked in my unknowing. I have no control, yet in a way, nothing has control over me. It is a maddening feeling. I emerge outside, in the clean streets of the city, and search for the things that can control me.

A fresh start

New town

New school

New people

Everything was perfect

At least that’s what it seemed

It was unlike anything I’ve ever dreamed of

The highs were higher than ever

But the lows

Were unexplainable and even painful

People wore masks, they caused that pain

Targeting the weakest points

Only the strong ones

survived the lows

I survived that lows

And I found out who my true friends were

Ones who didn’t wear a mask

Ones who picked me up

And reminded me of my worth

Showed me a new kind of high

An unforgettable experience

Waiting

A grandfather clock 

     stands in the corner

ticking through

     the dentist office

     music

A drill screams

    or patients

Novocaine and 

    fluoride reach

        my nose

I have an anxiety

    ache

She stood, frozen in the centre of the room. Frozen too were the bodies around her; their mouths carved brutally upwards into horrifying facsimiles of smiles. Unlike her, they would never move again.

The gap between beats of her heart felt like millenia, as every detail wormed its way into her mind and made a home there.

What have I done?

The only sound in the grotesque silence was the steady

drip

drip

drip

as red tore away from lifeless fingertips.

From the empty space behind came a press at her shoulder, and warmth on her neck.

“It’s your turn.”