Quarantine

Sickening.

The sun is yellow light streaming through leaves newly sprouted, a Spring is upon this earth in the South and the sunlight is lasting longer, powerfully distilled between branches.  It diffuses into the yard, among shadows and green lawns. I should feel comforted, awake-like and warm.

Sickening.

The children ride bikes, comfortably apart, but energy in the street...colorful helmets strolling by, mastering the balancing act of talking over their shoulders and riding forward.  They pirouette and glide by, laughing and talking loudly and pretending it is almost Summer...

Sickening.

There is still music to be heard, music to be played.  There is still a chance to wave to a neighbor and a chance to be quiet and peaceful.

But I feel a great distance...a grave distance.

I feel constrained and like I'm breathing through a woolen mask.

I trudge from the stairs to the floors and back again...a wealth of bed-head and whiskers...watching time become simply the slide of shadows across the landscape...the neighbor's house...the light through the blinds...sometimes it is fast...sometimes it is slow.

Sickening...the aches...the absences...like senility I am partially forgetting...I'm losing the shape of you in my mind...losing what it felt like to touch.  I know it is out there...or inside of me...somewhere.

I am sickened at the thought of the great distance...between us.

My fingers flutter away from me, my hand outstretched...trying to find you like a candle in a forest...I will come looking...I will.