This is not aloneness I could bear this pandemic better if Right before it struck my sister wasn’t Eight months pregnant. I’d bear it better if my heart Hadn’t just been broken. I’d bear it better if I’d invested in A fridge with more freezer space. I hav

This is not aloneness

I could bear this pandemic better if
Right before it struck my sister wasn’t
Eight months pregnant.
I’d bear it better if my heart
Hadn’t just been broken.
I’d bear it better if I’d invested in
A fridge with more freezer space.
I have no fear of aloneness.
I’ve spent much of my life in emotional solitude:
A childhood alone with a depressed mother;
School holidays alone suffering from chronic illness;
Travelling abroad alone to develop skills
As a writer who works alone.
Now, I don’t need to hold my family and friends, but
My heart needs to hold the same space as them,
To breathe the same air.
And when it comes to love
I’m not the platonic sort.
I need to touch and be touched, to rest my head on
Their chest and hear them breathing.
Projects are falling to pieces but
I trust there will be others.
There is no shortage of ideas,
But it’s the feeling of being unmoored –
The chance that the ideas
Will never see the light of day.
When people online talk about productivity,
I am being productive!
I am cooking and cleaning and sleeping
And that is part of the work too.
The loss of routine means that days are
Defined by moments, like
Fetching toilet paper from my brother’s house;
FaceTiming my newborn nephew, still pink;
Crying as I walk around the apartment
Thinking of men inflicting hurt –
The ones I’ve slept with, and the ones telling us
To inject ourselves with bleach.
Thank God for my cat and the new Fiona Apple album.