Looking in its Eye: Life in Quarantine

Central Park: NY


I was thinking of all the people near and far,
of people I don’t know,
but know
through someone else,
or the news, a friend of a friend,
and are suffering.
 
The delicateness and savagery,
all our broken ways, sabotage,
how we worry, how we beat ourselves up,
our addictions, our dark nights, our panic.

But the ways we triumph, make each other laugh,
post pictures of food and puppies on Facebook,
all the ways we love, and are connected,
and are alone, and I cried.

Because it’s all so beautiful and all so fucked up.
It is tangled, this beautiful mess,
and today, I want to hug my loved ones.
I want to smell them and protect them.
I want to see all their funny nuances
of how they joke and tease,
drive me crazy,  misunderstand,
and
​love just the same.

Because it’s there in an instant-
our brokenness, our redemption,
the way we fall, the way we get up,
the way we try again.
 
In our aloneness we share so much,
but it doesn’t stop people from being alone in their grief,
alone in the hospital.
Then once again I circle back to the beauty,
to the brilliance of this moment,
savage, calling to me,
daring me, 
to look it
​in the eye.