Lately it feels like magic when I’m alone. Empty home. Sun shining in. The tree is dry but still providing joy. I let my shoulders fall, my breath enter slowly. Eyelids close. This moment. It is mine. So few of these to call my own in a pandemic year with everyone home. I haven’t had opportunities to miss my husband, but my friends…I miss them dearly. I notice shapes when the house is empty.
Shapes.
Colors.
Space.
…I’m unexpectedly back on a nature trail by an ancient cemetery. And another. In another cemetery. They are peaceful, the dead. No chatter. No needs. My sister used to take solace in a graveyard and I then thought it so strange. Something at which to raise an eyebrow. Yet, now,…a peaceful sun-filled stroll near those resting souls…This is what I wish for today. But they have closed the cemetery. A virus is killing people and we are even shut out from the already-dead. It is tiresome, all this shutting and closing. Hiding and protecting. None of us want to discuss it any more yet we cannot stop. It overtakes every conversation and infiltrates every thought. Each hope. See? I always circle back to it, of course. When I took that magic breath in this rare quiet home a few moments ago, the last thing I wanted to be thinking about was the Coronavirus. It only took a few sentences. Wearying, this. All of this.
I will pick up my writing where I’ve left off. As if I’ve just paused in the grassy trail to attend to some things…check my pockets, look around. Hold the small creature who needs. Needs and needs. But a breath, a step. Towards the sun. Towards the light. Or maybe the sun warms my back this time. What time of day is it? I never seem to know. Always seem to be a few minutes or hours behind. Behind what? The world as it marches and spins it’s frantic rhythm. Steady, unrelenting. My child always needing me a few moments ago. Wanting to find my own pace, yet pulled in directions that make it difficult to hear my own clock. Sun, moon, guide me along this earthy route. Remind me to look East.
Hello, 2021, let us be friends.