It is so hard to find words these days. I sat down to write this piece days ago and the page stayed blank. I tried again the next day, and the day after. Nothing. It’s a strange thing, I said to a friend today, to have any kind of audience during this time. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what you want to hear. I don’t know what will help, if anything even will. It’s too easy for anything I put out into the world to feel gratuitous, when it feels like our existences have been stripped down to the bare essentials of being.
I left New York about a week ago. As of writing this, I’ve been in my hometown in true quarantine (not leaving the space I’m in, not even for groceries) for nine days. Time seems to shift and lose footing when your world shrinks to the two or three rooms you move between, to the stretch of sky you can see from your window. (Thank all the gods that I have a window.) In New York, though my anxiety kept me mostly housebound, I knew I had at least the illusion of freedom, the lure of a walk down the block and a spill of sun. Here, at least for another week, all I can do is open the blinds each morning. So I pace and eat and try to work and try to sleep. I am lucky to have a good companion, and family to look out for me. I am lucky for a lot of things, which feels like a strange thing to think in the midst of so much terror.
Today I sat down again to try writing something for you. The first thing I wrote was, “my fingers always smell like bleach.” The smallest, most tangible thing. The first thing I could think of. And then I started to pull out the threads around it. And before I knew it, there was something: my first poem in goodness knows how long.
So here they are. Here are all the words I have for now. I hope they give you even a sliver of recognition, of light.
But, the bluejays
stale peach
crackles plastic, wafts
from the crook of his neck
my molars gummed with regret
and all i should have taken when I left
he says i smell like a swimming pool
my fingertips perfumed
dipped in bleach, clean
is the only comfort
the highest priest
-ess i know lives not in my deck of cards
but perched in a third-floor nest,
where even my father (her youngest)
cannot (should not) reach
the magnolia tree, she told me,
is blazing blush before her eyes
Hero, she names it
i nearly say Habit
but maybe there is something noble
in staining a world still white with
fear
is the simplest poison, i think
sometimes my heart will stop with it
colorless drain, not even
the bitter bite of almond
to know what killed us
would be the easy horror
a long way off, a highway sign
date and time-stamped
at close of business, i watch
sun fall and numbers rise
lids imprinted with headlines
but if, like slates, i could wash
my eyes, i would too forget each night
(teasing bluejays, his lips
against my knuckle pleats—)
all the goodness i gave up
to be blind.