Pandemic Anthologies

My wife dragged me to Texas kicking and screaming.

We moved to San Antonio in late 2019, barely three months before the pandemic erupted. I had just retired from my job of many years as a secretary at New York University. My wife and I would now be living on Social Security and my small pension. We could no longer pay New York City rents. That, combined with Teresa’s long-brewing and by then all-consuming desire to return home and live out her life in the place that made her, had driven us southwest. There was also her mom, who’d been in a San Antonio nursing home with dementia for years and would turn ninety that December. Teresa wanted to take on more responsibility for her mother’s care, which her sisters had shouldered. Most important, she wanted to spend as much time with her as she could for as long as she could.

I’d been to San Antonio many times before, of course, on trips to visit Teresa’s family. They’d always whisked us around from spot to spot on the expressways that circle and crisscross the city. You don’t learn the lay of the land on expressways. Now I had to. I spent those first three months in San Antonio finding my way around, getting to know the place a little. The neighborhoods, the parks, the shops and taquerias.

At the same time I resisted. I needed to settle in but I could not bear to. It would mean letting go of the screaming swirling sensory-overload thrill-a-minute maelstrom back east that I adored. My true home. The other great love of my life. If I let go this would be real. New York would be gone. My old life over. Which was the reality, I knew. I was never going back. Yet I couldn’t accept it.

The first few months were rough. Mornings, I’d wake up crying from dreams of the city streets. At night I’d fall asleep crying as those images and so many others galloped over my brain. Coney Island. Brooklyn Bridge. Washington Square Park. The Strand bookstore. Veselka. The #7 train—the International Express transporting people from every nation—which I rode to and from work, between Queens and Manhattan, every day for so many years. God, I missed the #7 train. I missed the subway system as a whole, all those hours reading all those books while MTA workers delivered me anywhere I wanted to go. I missed walking, too, desperately. At home I’d walk to the drugstore, the eye doctor. To the park, and then around the adjacent streets deciding where to eat. Here in San Antonio you walk out of your house and into your car. That’s it. Wherever you go, you have to drive. I hated that. I stewed.

By February 2020 I started melting down. One evening it all exploded.

I laid on the living-room couch sobbing, banging my fists and screaming about how I missed New York. Bawling that I couldn’t live like this, that I wanted to go home. Teresa stayed in the bedroom not saying a word.

Up to then she’d been kind and patient, comforting, soothing. She was grateful I’d agreed to the move. She recognized what I’d walked away from. So all the other times when I whined or pouted, when I pined for the old way of life, she hugged me, she said she understood, she promised it would get better, I’d learn to love it here she said. Not that night. That night she stayed away. Silent. Finally I rose, stomped sniffling into the bedroom like a two-year-old and demanded to know why she wasn’t hugging me, comforting me.

She was cold, removed. When I butted up against her, physically forcing it, she embraced me, but without her usual warmth. I kept demanding more, asking why she wasn’t giving it, why she wasn’t being nice. She stayed stony. Finally she burst out with, “Why should I be nice? Why should I make you feel better? You love New York more than you love me. How am I supposed to deal with that?”

“Uh, hello,” I replied. “I left, didn’t I? I’m here, aren’t I? I came! For you!”

“But you’re so miserable you obviously wish you hadn’t.”

“No I don’t.”

“Don’t lie. You can’t stop crying over your great lost love.”

“I miss it. I know it’ll ease, but right now it’s fresh, it’s new, I can’t help it. But I don’t regret my decision.”

We were both crying now. She was growing less stiff. Letting me hug her, and, finally, hugging me back.

“You don’t?” she said.

“Of course I don’t. I could never have stayed there, or be anywhere for that matter, without you. We’ve been together thirty-one years. Do you really think I’d give that up? For a place?”

“Well—”

“Teresa, haven’t you ever heard of homesickness? I’ve got a case of it. That’s all. I lived there almost forty years and I loved it and I never wanted to leave but I left because I love you the most and so I’m here and I’m homesick.”

“You’ve had a loss. You’re grieving.”

“Exactly.” I sighed in relief, and she did too. “The only cure is time. Be patient with me. Please.”

*

Catastrophe hit one month later. Now Teresa was on the couch with me crying. We held each other, dumbfounded and horrified, watching TV news scenes of body bags piling up on the streets of Queens. In our old neighborhood.

Our miraculous neighborhood of western Queens. The most multinational square mile on Earth, where every language is spoken, every garb worn, where the streets are replete with heavenly aromas from every cuisine cooking in restaurant and home kitchens. Cardamom and cumin, lemongrass and tamarind, star anise and chili, so many varieties of chilis from so many lands.

In my almost forty years in New York City, I’d lived in quite a few apartments, driven from one to the next by rising rents. I’d lived in Manhattan. I’d lived in Brooklyn. But it’s that corner of western Queens, that vibrant community where I lived for the last twenty-five years, that I’ll always remember as home.

Now our Queens was the scene of carnage as gruesome as any battlefield. I wondered who the body bags held.

The old man who lived on our corner? We used to wave to each other as I passed every evening, he sitting on the front stoop watching his little grandchildren play before dinner, I walking home from the subway after work. I always felt a twinge of recognition because something about him—his glance, his stance—reminded me of my grandfather so many years ago. Even though my Queens neighbor was Pakistani and Muslim and my grandfather had been Jewish from Lithuania, even though this fellow and I were actually about the same age so conflating him with Papa, long dead and two generations removed, made no sense, it was a feeling I could never quell. Here was an immigrant, a kind gentle elder with crinkly smiling eyes, bald with a fringe of close-trimmed white hair, all of which exactly described my grandfather as I remembered him. Don’t get me wrong. I can’t overplay it. Can’t say we actually knew each other, or were in each other’s lives in any way. We were New Yorkers, after all. We only ever spoke a word or two, a “good evening” once in a while, shared a nod or a grin at his grandkids’ antics. I didn’t know his name. But he was a little piece of my New York.

Was he alive? My insides knotted from not knowing about the old man. Or about the waiter I used to chat with at the Stop Inn diner where I relished the best burger in the city—and, shockingly, better than any I’ve yet had in Texas. What about the health food store clerk with whom I’d talk books as she rang me up? Or the greengrocer’s granddaughter? The toddler would weave between customers’ feet as we picked out peaches and collards, peppers and cauliflower, tickling our legs then dashing away giggling.

Who died? Who survived?

All I knew as Teresa and I clung to each other was that this virus was ravaging my home. And that, for all my misery and complaints about leaving New York, we’d gotten out just in time. If we hadn’t left when we did, we too might have been dead by then. The coronavirus had hit hard, fast. In those early weeks, long before people donned masks, before anything shut down, I might easily have been infected on the #7 train, crammed in breathing everyone’s exhalations day after day. Then I might have infected Teresa. We might have made it to Elmhurst Hospital, crowded and overburdened in ordinary times but now filled with scenes out of a horror movie. Whether we’d have made it out alive, who knew.

“Admit it,” she said to me one night. “You’re glad we left New York. We’re lucky we’re here.” I nodded. She pressed on. “We’re alive. I saved us. Say it. Thank me.”

“That’s not why you did it, though—”

“Doesn’t matter. Thank me.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Say it.”

“Thank you.”

“And?”

“And I’m glad I’m here.”

“You’re welcome,” Teresa said, folding me into a bear hug and kissing the top of my head. “Welcome to Texas.”

“Oy vey,” I replied.

It was the first laugh we’d had in a while.

The pandemic would head here soon. We knew that. We were locked down and would be for who knew how long. We were scared. But from that day on, as my tantrums wound down, as we, inexplicably but I suppose inevitably, grew used to the devastating daily news while Covid carried out its global depradations, we did start laughing again, even if only at ourselves.

*

When the Minneapolis police killed George Floyd, when angry protests erupted everywhere, we couldn’t stay home. We’d been very strict, sticking to every protocol, never once setting foot inside anywhere except our own apartment, wiping down groceries, all that. Teresa had not been allowed into the nursing home in months. Fear and worry over her mother’s safety were eating her up but there was nothing to be done about it. Here was something we could do, something we knew how to do after our many decades of activism. We could show up and join the millions demanding justice. It was a small thing, two little old ladies raising our fists. But, Covid fears aside, we couldn’t live with ourselves if we didn’t.

In that summer of 2020, though, it wasn’t yet clear that being outside was safe. Especially not amid a crowd of thousands, which is what the first big San Antonio demonstration drew, some in masks but many not. We ended up following the marchers in our car.

That became our standard in the first year of the pandemic. If there was a march we brought up the rear, one of us driving and honking steadily, the other waving a placard out the passenger-side window. In car caravans, a new form birthed of the pandemic, we took our place in the motorcade. We wrote slogans on the back windshield in erasable marker. Black Lives Matter. Justice for George Floyd. We wove through the streets. It was nowhere near how we used to do things in New York, back in the before times. We never felt like we were contributing much. But, we told ourselves, at least we’re here. At least we’re showing up.

Since we got vaccinated, and boosted, and boosted several more times, and since the science clearly showed how much safer everything is outdoors, we’ve emerged from our car. We attend events, when we can. We can’t just sit at home and ignore the ravages of the world. But I’m still scared.

*

At other times in my life, in other circumstances, I’ve been at least a little bit brave on at least some occasions. I’ve faced off against cops and bigots at protest demonstrations, they punched and shoved me, and I bounced to my feet laughing. I’ve led strike picket lines and blocked entry to bosses and scabs. I’ve published poetry, which is truly frightening, and a novel, terrifying. All that is part of me. Now, if Covid lasts as it appears it will, the fear it’s engendered might also end up part of my core identity. I picture my epitaph. Lesbian socialist anti-racist Jewish anti-Zionist writer activist chickenshit.

Call me a coward. I don’t care. I will continue to do all I can to evade Covid, even if everyone else acts as though the pandemic is over. Because here’s the thing. Hundreds of people are still dying every week. That number will continue to rise and fall, epidemiologists predict, for the virus is immune to semantic slight of hand labeling it last year’s news. Of these hundreds or thousands Covid kills each week, mostly they’re like Teresa and me. Old, with various medical conditions. But Teresa is only in her mid seventies, and I’m only a couple years behind, and we’re nowhere near ready to throw in the towel. We’ve been together thirty-seven years. We should have plenty more left. So I check the wastewater statistics every week. During each surge, which now comes pretty predictably twice a year, I return to full retreat. No restaurants. No packed events. Wherever I do go inside, I mask up, and even if mine is the only mask in evidence everywhere I go, and it generally is, it stays on.

For over thirty years in New York Teresa pined for San Antonio. Life there was busy, full, stimulating, fun. It’s not like she spent nights curled up on the couch crying from homesickness. Still, she did tell me. Right from the start. “I’m not staying here forever,” she’d say. When retirement approached, when she said the time had come, when she reminded me that I’d always known, I had no recourse.

What was I going to do? Split up? Let her go alone? Stay in the city I adored? On my own? Come on. This is a love story. There has to be a happy ending. So here we are.

We bicker sometimes. Being locked in together has upped the irritation quotient. Fine. We laugh way more than we fight. We entertain each other enormously. Sometimes I slip into a sort of Borscht Belt comedian shtick. That slays my girl. She tells deeply corny knock-knock jokes. I’m a sucker for it. We watch a ridiculous amount of TV, way more than we ever used to, and we get a kick out of that moment each day when one of us will look at the other and announce, “I’m ready to turn on the machine.”

I no longer resist as San Antonio inexorably turns itself into home. This lovely city that is Mexico—“el lado robado” my wife calls it, the stolen side—which makes it wonderful, but that is also Texas. Which makes it, well you know. San Antonio, with its charming River Walk. But Texas, featuring illegal abortion, relentless attacks on trans people, racist redistricting, ICE storm troopers and families in cages and a governor who forcibly ships migrants cross-country by the busload. San Antonio: great food, quirky tree-lined neighborhoods, friendly folks, good manners, a lively arts scene. Texas: guns and trucks and “Go Brandon” bumper stickers and death row.

No knishes. No to-go coffee cups with faux-Greek graphics. No weaving my way through crowded sidewalks. No subway. No ocean. But Teresa. Here. Teresa and me, here, for the duration.

I’m still determined to protect us both. If the pandemic never fully ends, whatever new fact-adjacent contortions are performed to make it appear that it has, I’ll keep up my guard. That’ll be me, the kooky old gal walking the aisles of H-E-B masked to the gills, no one knowing whether I’m smiling or, because old New York habits die hard, cursing under my breath. And that’ll be Teresa, waiting in the car listening to Tejano music, cranking the air conditioning to full blast. Here we’ll be together, in her old and my new home, squinting and sweating in the Texas sun for as long as we possibly can.

I want normal people problems
Like worrying about my fat
And crying over a broken nail
I want to shake my fist at a driver
And get a ticket in traffic

I want normal people problems
Like having too many shoes
And clothes that are too old
With too many holes
But still the kind you can’t let go

I want to rush to a meeting
But never be late
I want to reschedule and mean it
I want to meet new people
And worry about what I said

I want normal people problems
Like listening to my friend cry
And giving her the worst advice
I want to do chores with my husband
And argue about who’s turn it’s next
I want to walk with my dog
I want to run by myself
I want to forget about my problems
And worry about
How fast the day went

I want normal people problems
Like getting mad at myself for not doing more than I can
I want to stretch because I can
and not because I have to
I want to stop counting my steps
Because I did more than I wanted to
I want to talk on the phone for hours
Without feeling defeated

I want normal people problems
Like not deciding where to have dinner
And be served the wrong meal
Because I just want to have dinner
With my husband
And remember how it feels

I want reach out to my aunt
I want to laugh with my mother
And be good a mother
A good mother
to my son

I want to have memories worth photographing
I want my body to remember
What it was like before
Before
My problems got worse

I want to wake up and feel the sun
And feel ready for the day
But not quite ready for today
Because my problem is
I can’t stand waking up early

But I guess that’s normal
A normal problem
For a person to have
And sometimes that does make me feel normal
So I’ll hold on to the only normal people problem
I have
For the person
I am
today

The walls I built will they be enough for you
to climb?
They are lined with swirls that bend into
bass clef designs
That bend into more
Weeds that feed the cracks that are the
psoriasis in my skin
My hair that curls that bounces. The
flowers on the wall that hold angelic
weight in the breeze, just like my hair
A botanists dreams beyond a flower bed
Beyond chrysanthemums and beyond
magic
The wind is a cold pillow
Are you sure you can make the climb?
Who knows if they’re carnivorous
You say “I can take my chances”
I say “what if I hurt you?”
You coo “what if you don’t?”

Me
M E
Myalgic Encephalomyelitis is a mouthful.
I don’t like to say it because the name sounds exactly like the reality of
living with it.
I’m choking on it.
But if I don’t say it
and I disappear,
who will know what took me out?
If I disappear…
Dark blotches in my peripheral
close in just a bit more each day.
My heart still flutters when the seasons change.
I watch from the windows now,
or on a good day from the porch.
Remember what it felt like
To move without paying a price
To take deep breaths of winter air
without feeling like I’m dying.
Oh! And I remember laughing with friends in a diner on a rainy day like
this.
I still love the sound of the rain,
though the drops are sharper now,
My heart flutters.
Longing for feelings of the past:
Of kissing someone without a care,
Of hands brushing hands,
Of the touch of lovers,
Of headphones and
music for as long as I want,
Of sun on my face
before light became
a frenemy,
before the world became
so small
Four walls
Dim lights
🎶I wear my sunglasses at night🎶

I collect high quality
face masks now
instead of rocks and sticks
and tarot decks.
Every outing is
a date with vertigo.
Every conversation
takes a toll.
Especially the good ones
God, I’ve always loved the phone.
Especially one with a cord,
tethered to a wall.
I miss cigarettes,
cheap liquor in a fancy flask,
predicting futures brighter than this.
I miss a good kiss,
I really miss a good kiss.
Anyway.
If I fade away
let it be
during a memory—
one that makes
my heart flutter.

YEAR 36
OCTOBER
Mostly the days are the same. The sameness is good. Probably. At least it means I’m not
crashing, and maybe it means my nervous system is regulating itself.
I repeat my mantra:
I am strong. I am regulating. I am healing.
. . . .
JANUARY
I have asked for help and I am waiting to find out whether an anvil will smash me into the
ground.
. . . .
FEBRUARY
I load the test results. Red after red after red, just like the blood that dribbled into the piles of
tubes. I am so happy to see this color, which used to mark the times when I was wrong, but
today marks that I am right. I. Am. Right.
I am a balloon, expanding instantly full of hope. Let this be the part of the story that turns
everything around. I want to stay floating. Universe, please don’t let me pop.
. . . .
YEAR 37
JANUARY
Life is not a story, and there is not a part that turns everything around. The latex is is scattered
on pieces across the ground—ground that just keeps sinking. How to cope on this endless
Tower of Terror that jumps around but whose bottom keeps finding lower?
But Rebecca says The Planets, and the Blockage, and that We have been Blocked for years,
but The Alignment which began to shift in November keeps shifting such that we will be Free by
March. Does that mean there is a Bottom to this bottom?
I am still strong. I am still regulating. I am still healing.
. . . .
The past two months have been a deep unwell. Endless plains, stretching across a dusty
nothingness. I feel tiny things under the surface trying so hard to grow, but they are pummeled
back into the earth by the relentlessness of the outside (my inside?) pushing down down down.
Last fall, I had briefly gathered momentum. A buzzing had grown in my chest, enough to drag
me from the alive into the living. But suddenly, I fell into a cavern, deep and steep and dark. Any
movement I think I make is just an optical illusion: a play of light that makes the surface tease
closer, even though it remains steady, fixed, and far.
I am clawing for purchase on vertical walls. My fingertips bleed from the jagged edges of
undone things, dreams deferred, and the monotonous nothing. They can’t scab over until I stop
clawing at the shards and accept the brokenness that surrounds me. So reluctantly I accept,
leaving my insides weary for the chance that one day, I again feel the buzzing start to fill this
void. To fight, I must relent.
. . . .
I imagine I am afloat in an endless ocean on a raft that ensures only that my body will stay alive.
I do not know how long I will float before hitting land. Suddenly I realize that I could be atop this
raft for all time, sometimes pelted with rain and sometimes warmed by the sun, but never finding
the land of which I so desperately dream.
Yo ho, yo ho: find contentment on this sea.

I want to speak to this because I have heard no one talking about it.

Masking as a young black man has made me a huge target for hate. I moved to a big city recently and the harassment I receive has now snowballed into happening multiple times a day.

Every cis man and woman who has ever felt intimidated by black masculinity sees me as a socially acceptable opportunity to let out some of that resentment through mockery. In the area I live, it is common to see older adults, people with visible disabilities, and people of east asian descent to wear masks, but somehow a black man wearing a mask is an affront to centrist sensibilities. The racist and homophobic abuse that I receive has absolutely ballooned.

I can hardly believe that this world will not let me live in peace after I have crossed borders and done sex work just to survive. I will continue to mask because I refuse to subject myself to harm just to make fascists feel normal. But it is hard not to balk at how little integrity people have when it comes to doing more than just saying the right things.

Home was safe.
Home was a sigh of relief.
Home was the warmest blanket.

It looks relatively the same, but quieter.
A thick silence hovers in the air here now.
A distant memory of laughter, dancing and story telling, echoes softly with
the pines singing above.

Small batches of crumbs mirroring the before times, sprinkled throughout
the warm sandy dirt beneath our feet.
We crave for the taste of normalcy, even if it’s laced with poison.
Oh how I wish I could take a big bite of poisoned crumbs and be
transported back there again!
The longing grows with each person I used to know…

The slow decay is taking hold of everyone and everything.
One crumb can’t hurt, right?
A chip in the armour appears. No biggie!
A second crumb is consumed. The chip cracks open.
A third crumb; fist sized hole.
A fourth? Another Crack forms.

The crumbs of normalcy take over like a worm. Burrowing its way to the
warmest juiciest corners of flesh.
With each bite it takes, another chunk of cognitive function and
comprehension is lost.
No thinking. Just do.

All of the ugliness seeps out in violent bits of rage followed by blank
expressions and more wandering.
More join in.
A carousel of illness is the only joy available.
Conform or be ostracized.
Conform or be humiliated.
Conform or die alone.

They gather around with their various faces, poorly trying to conceal
their sickness.
Mucous spewing in a cloud hovering around the hoarde.

“I’m not sick! It’s just allergies! Trust me.”

“Stay home, freak!”

Power walking away as quickly as my cane and I can go. I try to remind
myself, “my mask works! The chances of contamination are low”.

Removing my outdoor clothing, I breathe in a deep breath of purified air.
It smells better here too.
Preparing for other survivors to join us in fun activities to keep spirits up,
I am content and calm again.

I let my guard down.
I trusted.

My memories for the next 2 years are of distraught, betrayal, intense
pain and a hunger for sleep that can only be achieved through death.

I was never the same after being infected.
I could feel myself fighting this new monster squatting in my mind… a
monster of sabotage.
It’s a mental leech; taking away my memories, suppressing my danger
sensors and filling me with rage.

Empathy is harder.
Walking, eating, hydrating, medicating, sleeping, bathing… everything is
harder.

The curse has lifted for many others… but me?
This curse is still mine.

The relationship I have with death has scared my mother more than it has ever scared me. I feel as though I’ve known grief since my inception. I understood the roles of interpersonal family relationships and just as quickly experienced sadness when those relationships failed or harmed me. I wonder if whoever said ‘To have loved and lost is better than to have never loved at all’ knew what it felt like to have an unspoken promise of life broken by death. I wonder if they knew that death is more than just love lost. It’s unforgettable memories turned into haunting recollections. It’s the nostalgic nausea from watching others build a similar relationship that is now only one-sided for you. There is something to be said when the absence does not, in fact, make the heart grow fonder. Though I wonder what it is we are truly missing in the aftermath of a loved one’s death. As much as we don’t want it to be, the human condition is a finite process with a beginning and end. Even grief, as it is pathologized by modern psychology comes in stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance with the only caveat being the amount of time it takes each person to go through them. Still, it’s an illusion to think that there ever is an end to it. What we feel has been broken is our unrealistic hope for eternal life. I contend that the true source of grief are the words left unsaid in life and about one’s legacy. Grief is thought to only break us but it can also transform us when we find meaning in loss. I wonder what new expressions of grief become available to us when we let those we love define their legacy in life so that they can live on in us after their return to the earth.

I can recall my great grandmother’s funeral from what fragmented pieces remain imprinted on my six-year-old mind. I wasn’t sad or immediately inconsolable looking upon my GG’s lifeless body. There was a peace on her face that almost seemed to make things still inside of me. Despite not having known her as long as my mother and grandmother had, I recognized a soul in its final blissful slumber when I saw one. I remember trying to make myself cry because it seemed to be what everyone else was doing but I wasn’t sad. GG didn’t seem sad so why was everyone else so distraught? Everyone except my mother displayed denial and general upset at her passing. In years to come, my mother would tell me more about this sobering moment in her life. Having always had a fraught relationship with my grandmother, my mom was close to GG as though she had been the one to give birth to her. To me, it only made sense that her passing would cause a conflict between them but the nature of it felt different than I thought it might be. The news of my GG’s passing came from my uncle who had found her. He described it as her having passed in her sleep but, let my mom tell it, GG knew it was her time. She put down one of the many hospital pads my grandmother brought home from her job as a nurse, laid on her back with her hands crossed over her navel, and journeyed into her final rest. At 92 years old, with her eyesight going and no cartilage in her knees, my GG was self-sustaining until the very end. So, with no one to blame other than spacetime for her eventual demise, it baffled me that my grandmother found time in her grief to judge my mother’s.

GG was already up in age when my mother was born but as was the plight of many undocumented black women in the 1970s and 1980s, she took my mom to work with her during the day while my grandmother slept so she could work 12-hour nights. This was the case for most of my mother’s young life and even more so when she got older because my grandmother grew crueler with time. GG would often remind her that she wasn’t going to be there forever and each time, my distraught mother would go to her room and plead with the stars above that she would just live long enough to meet me. I know my mother probably begged the universe more times than she would ever admit to me because she and I are alike in that way. From the moment they’d gotten the news, I remember my grandmother being hysterical. She yelled, stomped, wailed, and wept but my mother had a more refined expression of her grief. She found solace in the fact that the universe had answered her cry. The promise of life had been granted and for that, my mom felt no need to be angry or depressed. She had done her bargaining while she still had time and let the cards fall where they may. There was something profound about that realization as my mother told me this story. As her only child, I had gone through my rites of passage as a ‘but why’ kid. However, in this moment, I needn’t ask her for anything more. It would only make sense that she wouldn’t bite the hand that had fed us. I got to know my GG for six long years. I have pictures of her holding me while we slept. I remember the large cups of cream of wheat that had been sweetened to perfection with condensed milk that she made for me in the mornings. I am filled with awe when I recounted the stories of how she took care of me and never complained when I drooled all over her bed as an infant. “She just wants to talk,” GG would tell my mother when she profusely apologized. Even in our brief time together, if someone were to ask me about her, they would get an earful.

Death would show up in my life again in little ways from that point on but each time, I hadn’t ever truly experienced grief over the deceased. I look back on a friendship I lost with a once close friend of mind around the time her father had passed. I had met her father and knew how close they were yet I was still unable to comprehend what she was going through. I had never experienced grief-related anger before so when she confessed that she felt like I hadn’t been there for her, I didn’t try to deny it because I hadn’t known what she needed! Even with all the things that I would have had to put on hold to be there for her, I might have tried a bit harder to be that comfort we had fostered in our friendship if I had had even the slightest bit of personal experience with what she was going through. I was too young for the loss of my GG to impact me in a way that would have been empathetic. Though I recognized where her pain resonated from, I unfortunately couldn’t help her on a journey that I had never been on myself. And so, I continued on like this until the Great Panini. I was never under any misconception that death wouldn’t come knocking at my door. I was not special or exempt from the many close calls I’d had. The day would come when it would finally win the game of duck, duck, goose. I hadn’t realized how unprepared I was to lose my grandfather. I didn’t know what it would feel like to realize that I had watched him deteriorate before my very eyes from COVID-19 without even knowing. There was no way I could have prepared to be denied the right to lay him to rest due to a global pandemic. Not only had grief been forced upon me but I couldn’t even choose how I wanted to express it. Suddenly, I was alone on a journey I had watched others I loved go through with no one to relate to in its formative stage. I have found myself in the de-linear lifestyle of grief ever since. Something I had hoped I could carry in grace like my mother had, has left me in tatters even to this day. I often reflect on how the passing of my grandmother, who left a legacy of indifference, didn’t even get a tear from me yet I continue to weep for the man she married who had loved me like family. I hadn’t been given time to know what his wishes were but, given the opportunity, I know he would have liked what I would have planned for him. I know that not being able to lay him to rest my self weighs heavy on me. Not because I couldn’t accept the circumstances that made it that way but for the mere fact that the choice had been taken away as a whole. I didn’t get to send him home with the same love and care he had shown me since I had known him. It wasn’t safe to hold a repass and reminisce on his life. I knew then that no matter how much I accepted his physical absence, the nature of his passing would be the part of my grief that would take the longest to heal. If it ever healed at all.

The dead owe us nothing and yet we owe them everything. We owe it to them to honor their departure with the light of how they lived. When we grieve the loss of their physical presence, we reduce their impact on our lives to a mere snapshot of an inevitable circumstance of life as we know it. The question then becomes how do we do this without policing our grief? My grandfather had a presence in the neighborhood he lived in and often, I am reminded of his impact when those who knew him stop by his last residence in search of him. I see the joy he brought to their life in their quest for him and I bask in that. They reminisce about the last time they saw him, and, in that moment, I am transported to my grief. Having been denied the right to be laid to rest by those he loved, I find pride in being able to give the news of his death the soft landing it deserves. Keeping his name on the tip of my tongue is the comfort his memory is owed after being denied the space to soothe those of us who needed it most. I may never be able to take his passing in stride like my mom was able to with my GG. I have no desire to judge my mother who finds it difficult to cry about his passing for her own reasons. Some days, I am reminded of the way he called me Boobie and become filled with nostalgia. On those days, the waters are still as when a rock is skipped along the surface. Other times, the memory of his love that once was is enough to take me out for an entire day. I may not have known exactly how he wanted to live on in the memories of those who loved him most but his life has given me time to reflect on what I want my promise to be. When I cross over to the unknown, I hope my loved ones find solace in the purity of my love for them. If I’ve made an impact on them at all, I hope they share that with their community, their loved ones, their friends. Most of all, I hope the love I’ve given them transcends my lifetime and that they, too, are immortalized by the love that they gave to others.

Three years ago
the woman in the article
was given twelve months
to live.
She made her list—
family travel concerts meals—
and, day by day, joy by joy,
checked each memory off.
She spent
what would have been
her sisters’ inheritance
on treating them
to cabins and desserts
and hugs that went on forever:
the last of everything.
The calendar turned over.
She awoke
still alive. Then again.
Again. Any day now,
She thought, but any day
didn’t come.
She awoke 34,
then 35. No job
no savings no partner
no plan. Why would she
have bothered
to keep them.
Numbers rendered meaningless.
The prognosis, cruel prankster
taking her life
only to slip it under the doormat
as she slept, in a place
she would not find it.
She is unmoored
from the future, no reason
to renew the library card
the driver’s license the lease,
and so they expire.
The false timeline
has disappeared her.

*
If tomorrow
an angel descended
and offered to kill me
in the gentlest way possible
and promised
my loved ones would understand—
if they said it could all be over
and no one would be mad
I would ask
if there was another angel
with the power
to let me treat my siblings
to cabins and desserts
to let me travel dance laugh
without risking my own life.
We both know
there is no second angel
and the first would be
a miracle
and so I awake 39,
40, 41, 42, my coins tinkling
into the doctors’ coffers,
no job no house no dog
no concerts no dancing
no flights no seders
because everyone knows
the pandemic is over.

*
The woman in the article
convenes a weekly meeting
for crafters in her church basement.
In between the tests and appointments
that may, at any time, promise
a new true/false death,
she calls her sisters.
She looks for work.
At the supermarket,
she chooses two yellow
and two green bananas.
What else
can she do.

i go about my days carrying an invisible scythe on my back
i am what they would call dead, when in reality i am merely cognizant of death
that has earned me the nickname of “grim reaper”
although my efforts are to ward off death, not invite it
third, fifth, tenth infections
i see the looks in their eyes, that desperately want to pretend everything is over
glazed over either from the brain fog or holding back tears of the lives we will never
live again
they look at me with curiosity, disgust, a disconnected, vacuous sympathy
but in their eyes they lack the vision to imagine a world
where merely walking by someone doesn’t kill them
“it sucks you have to do that”
you say to me, still hauling death like a log dragged behind your back
there’s that vacuousness that will be the closest to sympathy i can garner
what’s that malcolm X quote?
about the liberal being the fox, waiting to stab you in the back?
well, the liberal and the conservative are holding me at gunpoint while they enjoy
their indoor restaurant seating and crowded music festivals
i can tell them everything i know
they can nod in agreement, puppeted by the sense that someone, somewhere
should do something
but none of it phases them. they don’t change.
did they hit their head on the log of death they carry?
may we mourn the casualty of causality.

for the people we claim dignity, our task assigned fittingly
for the homeless, the poor, for the victims of war
but all our movements crack
when i merely want to ask
“why aren’t you wearing a mask?”

i don’t know how you explain fear to someone.
i can rattle off all the facts, the facts that make me want to burst into tears
at the thought that we all thought this was okay.
that this is just “something we have to deal with now.”
my greatest fear of returning to that hospital bed
doctors holding me down as i screamed, my parents having no choice but to hold my
hand and watch
is all one infection away at any given moment.

Dream after dream
I am with my friends again
The virus doesn’t exist
Or it has been eradicated
By collective action
In real life my state is open
Even though the virus
Is not gone
To think I fear something invisible but then again
Most of what I fear is invisible
Don’t worry, it’s almost gone, it’s getting better they say
While the numbers grow past what we ever expected and this is what a pandemic does in a
country that doesn’t care enough,
Turns people into numbers
Dead people now just statistics used to decide if we should all go back to work or not
Make money to save an economy in a country that doesn’t give a damn about us unless we
already have money
They don’t care if their decisions bring more workers, more sick people
To their graves

i don’t go out much
now
i am protecting my
body from a virus
that could cause my chronic illnesses to flare
or give me a new chronic illness
or much worse
people try to pretend
this is over
while millions of people
are dying
disabled lives
are meaningless to them
i only feel remotely safe
with a barrier between my face
and the world
but to them our safety is loss of
freedom
people cheer as delta airlines announces
that they can take off their masks
my heart breaks when i hear the news
i just want us all to have the freedom
to live through this