Dispatches from a Pandemic: living/dying/reliving

Content Note: COVID-19

for Nina, Q, and Fenrir

in the middle of a plague that’s killing thousands around her,
I learn that my friend is in remission.

another two friends are moving out of their
second shitty apartment of the year and
into a house a hundred klicks away.

and I hear from Sara Cody speaking on the TV
that maybe,
just maybe,
we’re seeing the first hints of daylight in the long storm.

I long for the day when I can once
again reach out and touch my friends, when I
can hug gleefully without the spectre of
death upon us, when I
might finally feel normal again –

and then I remember there’ll never be
normal again and I
wonder if I’m wrong for wishing for
the world to extend beyond my parents’ front door
once again.