Don’t shake out your dirty laundry, the television says. You might release a viral cloud.
There’s the guy I’ve always wondered about, the one across the street who leaves big chunks of bread on the fire escape for the pigeons.
Meanwhile, I’m reverting to the diet of a five-year-old. All I want to eat are peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Each headline is more disorienting than the last, and these pandemic days are breeding baroque conspiracies.
Every night the Electrifying Mojo would sign off with the same message and I want us to hear it in our heads now, delivered in a slow baritone with a grin around the edges.
The optics feel wrong, more like a simulation than reality; it’s eerie to see New Yorkers so evenly spaced apart.
I hear the undoing of a lock and her voice calling behind me. “Thank you, darling. Pray for me.”
A deeper hush fills the city, a sense of bracing for an unseen blow. We know things will get worse.
This is dedicated to the nighthawks and graveyard shifters, you beautiful enemies of sleep.
I spent the morning scrolling through images of empty highways and blank parking lots that look like a new form of land art or maybe a message to the gods.
Once this is over and we’re allowed to gather outside again, I hope we take to the streets for all kinds of reasons.
There’s a blush of dopamine, an uncoiling of the nerves: the smudged memory of doing arts and crafts in a classroom while a storm beats against the windows.
