Walls

These will be the difficult days.These will be the tough ones.

These will be the weeks where you feel locked in and closed up, beat down and chewed out just let me walk out and breathe in the rain let me see the sun

shine.

Let me walk down the streets in peace with the noise and the cars and the traffic and the dust. Let me buy my groceries and feel like I don’t have to rush home and fear the infection as I disinfect and disinfect

and disinfect and disinfect and disinfect

and d i s i n f e c t.

I want to wander the aisles of the local market, wonder at what I’ll bring home not will this last me two weeks and what will feed me. I want takeout. I want thursday nights in front of the tv with my mother and my sister being me but not this new me, this me that fears hugs and touches and for the lives of everyone she holds dear.

I want, and the walls close, and I want, and time suspends.

But I must remember:

I am not in war. I am not in hunger. I am not on the streets. I am not without connection. I am not without things to do and things to read and things to write and things to play and a bed so soft I can sleep all day. I am not counting coins and wondering when I once again step into the outside will I still have a home and a life.

I am not without, I am just within.

These will be the difficult days.

But they will be okay.

And we shall create.

And be.

And live.

(And sleep.)

And we will overcome.

We will overcome.

Things will be okay.