Quarantine: the first three months March I will use this time to ponder the big ideas. I will use this time to love my family harder, to practice being better at everything. I will live in this house so fully I’ll forget about the moon. I’ll be estranged from the sun. I’ll hide behind a curtain of rain. My children have re-entered my body, moved all their furniture into my brain. They run back and forth between my ears all day, and sleep on the ledge behind my eyes. I don’t need to go back to the world that was before. I’m so tired of all the people I can’t see. The big ideas can fuck right off. What a mess of stars. What an ocean of grief. What a head full of waste. April The body in revolt, every organ its own tribe. Kidneys, little night beggars, reach out for a bite. Astonished ovaries. Aloof intestines. Axons and dendrites flipping switches and constructing guillotines. Spinal secession. I lay awake at night, laptop open on my belly. Hey Google, what’s wrong with my lungs? Losing weight everywhere but neck and head. Tired lollipop, licked into translucence. I can see my own heart now, pushed up against the skin, holding up a sign that says Stop. May Oh, the terrible busywork, the blinking screens, the tables pushed together like bumper cars. My to-do list is threatening suicide. Yesterday, the challenges I’d set for myself jumped out the attic window, splat. An hour later, they showed up at my front door, reincarnated as salsa and Scrabble games.
How to dance in a pandemic
The metronome won’t wait
for the singer’s feelings.
If you want to be in the song, you have to
sync up. Measure your notes
against the cracks in the staff,
push your luck
into a melody that aches and lulls and steps
across the beats, but never outside.
Try to keep up with the pace of these days: slow
but unforgiving. Aimless, severe, with blurry middles
and edges like broken glass.
The nights are swept-up dust.
Breathe in, but don’t breathe out.
The inhale is the irritant, the exhale
dead on arrival.
On second thought, hold your breath.
Forget your lines. Tell your toes
to stop their tapping.
A steady beat is not the same
as a song.
Only a couple more weeks or months or years