The weight of her head in the crook of my arm feels holy, a miracle in the midst of the terror of the world. She grounds me, pins me into place.
"and / if i were to die today, like so many already have / i would ask before i leave to see the / dogwood shedding outside my grandmother’s third home..."
"Standing in line I’d scan the cases, looking for poppyseed kuchen, the strudel-like confection Nanny Frida, my paternal grandmother, made when I was growing up—the black paste with its raisins, nuts and sugar rolled into flaky dough, a taste of her native Hungary and lessons learned in her mother’s kitchen in the foothills of the Tatra Mountains..."
" 'Of course' I replied, happy that for the first time since this whole thing started I was serving a purpose, no matter how small..."
"He had said they were in this together, that if one of them went down the other would, too. After all, isn’t a relationship really about what you do when things get rough..."
"There's a map with shades of blue that have crept across the entire globe, China and Germany, Chile, Michigan and California. People that suddenly became little blue specks clustered together in warning to the rest of us."
"I have never been a germaphobe until this month, but now I can’t shake the image of the crowned virus which could fill my throat and lungs, and turn me into a hacking, wretched vector of death..."
The stillness had not outlawed the soul-craft birthed out of dial tones...
No longer will the first sip of my second cup be during the walk to my office...
Life in the time of pandemic is not in-person, day-of-election voting...
I’m not a man with a sign and unkempt salt and pepper beard standing at the end of the highway for you to ignore...
