How We Survived the First Year of the Pandemic
A Collaborative Effort with Devon Henry
Grit. Strength. Resilience.
No one tells you you'll need
to be stronger than sandpaper
on a brutally hot summer's day.
You move through life slowly,
unwilling to shapeshift, unable
to put up with some shit . . .
But you know where you stand.
The first year of the pandemic
slithered its snaky skin into
our lives — blindsided us with a
force we could not stop.
We have silly putty for leaders
and fake devils as authoritative
figures, who could we trust . . .
We learned to depend on
clean face masks, six feet of
distance, and isolating ourselves
from others.
We Zoom'd, Duo'd, Skyped, and
glued our butts to our favorite
chairs as we gained the quarantine
fifteen, twenty, and thirty pounds.
We're fitted for survival.
We're surviving among the fittest.
A bang that makes your eardrums pop
and you wonder if there’s really
nothing going on around you
or if you simply can’t hear it
anymore; the buzz in a main
character’s ears when their
car blows up in a film:
No one tells you how quiet a
room is when a soul has left
it for the last time
And so you slouch home
from bed-to-couch-to-bed
again, pausing briefly to
acknowledge when you’ve hit
the center of the loop
when suddenly a hand, no
many hands, familiar hands
Lift you up much the same
way a parent would rescuing
a toddler from oncoming
traffic, the hands that have
wiped tears from their own
eyes that looked upon their
own tragedies
They will help us clean up
they will help us build
It’s always such a pleasure to work with Devon. She can take a thought and turn it into something indescribable. I felt it was only right to open the new year with her.
©2020 Devon Henry and Tremaine L. Loadholt
Our previous collaborations: Sweet Caroline at the Satellite & changes, like the wind.
