I Skype everyone. Older sister Nancy, Mama, friends from my graduate program. Move this way, that way. I can’t see your face.
We speak in brief bursts and talk of anything and nothing. We laugh at Larry David wearing a MAGA cap, not outbreak statistics. We talk about thunderstorms, not toilet paper wars.
I want to tell them the truth. I don’t want to be alone. Give me comfort, false and fleeting. But I’d have to comfort too. All I have are dark quarantine jokes.
I try to close electronic distance, drown white walls.
Tears rise. I can’t quarantine them.
We speak in brief bursts and talk of anything and nothing. We laugh at Larry David wearing a MAGA cap, not outbreak statistics. We talk about thunderstorms, not toilet paper wars.
I want to tell them the truth. I don’t want to be alone. Give me comfort, false and fleeting. But I’d have to comfort too. All I have are dark quarantine jokes.
I try to close electronic distance, drown white walls.
Tears rise. I can’t quarantine them.
