Watching beautiful sunny days pass by from the inside
Tracking the shape-shifting shadows slide slowly along the walls and floors
Seeing the sun kiss each leaf of every plant, uniquely at its own daily scheduled time
Stringing together meals like Christmas lights
From pang to idea to assessment to exploration to preparation to plate-setting to eating to cleaning to washing and back to waiting for the next tingle of hunger
Watching shows minute by minute, episode by episode, season by season
Puzzles piece by piece
Work type by type
Cleaning every nook, rediscovering every dusty book, refolding every wrinkled t-shirt
Counting all my socks, scrolling all my picture posts, reading all my blogs
Listening to all the tunes, lifting every weight, remembering every taken trip
Embedded, embraced, sometimes overwhelmed, by the slow, slow days of Covid-19
now well into 20
Doing what we can, in order to distract from all that we cannot
Like fly to Abuja, or drive to California, or share a hug
I’d give anything to elbow bump a colleague, or coach, or old friend
To have lunch with my folks and brother, linger over plates of noodles and pots of green tea,
like germs were still invisible
Plan a trip, book a cottage, try on new jeans
Remember when Tom Hanks got it? When the NBA cancelled the season? The Iranian Minister of Health?
Seems like a lifetime ago in Covid years. But it’s only been months. Dozens of weeks. Hundreds of days. Thousands of hours. Millions of minutes. Billions of seconds.
Since those simple normal outdoor times
Now it’s all bad quarantine haircuts, zoom meetings with one person unmuted (so their dog and kid as well), and live streams for an audience of three
At least, for once, we have each other,
and by that I mean everyone on Earth
Hunkered down, unsure, better or worse
Watching the sun pass by on the floor under our feet,
illuminating all that is found
on the inside.