Quarantine
It’s quiet.
so quiet I want
to scream
just to fill up
the empty space
around me.
Something hurts.
But I can’t figure out where,
or what.
But it hurts so much
I want to disappear,
or something.
I don’t remember
The Before Times,
in the way you start to lose
the faces of people you
once knew, now dead.
But I can’t help the way my mind forgets.
I think of thousands of strangers
spending so much time
in the painful quiet too.
Which of them have given
into the screams?
And into the disappearing?
Which of them have
let go of the longings for before?
For the times when loneliness was
only ever experienced
in the company of others.
The times where quiet didn’t exist.
I’m asking myself questions
I never have, like
why am I crying
for the times
when I didn’t find joy
in a daily walk,
or fall blissfully into the
ease of hugging a loved one?
Why do I want to rage
For the times when I could barely
gasp for air,
always inhaling for more,
more?
Leaving empty spaces
empty
is a skill
I never knew.
Before.
