Six months in

I look at the children.

It’s harder to watch the children.

The elders, they look harder, chagrined, chastened.

Adapted to the life but holding the sadness, the awareness that there was an existence before.

The children, though.

They giggle.

They have such plasticity. 


Absorption.


The life we have now will soon be all they know.

Maybe it already is. 


This fear.

The rules.

The shifting of guidelines.

All the lines. 



I worry. 



How do we tell them to stop adapting.


Please hold out.

Remember a life that wasn’t this.

Hold in your heart the longing for something more,

something warmer.

Kinder.

But,

I think,

that’s a lie too.

This life is just more honest.

A representation of the loneliness that already was.

The cold. The lines. The lies.

How do we tell the children that, in fact,

nothing has changed.

But everything has.

I worry.

Signs everywhere.

I look at the children.

It’s hard to watch them.

Growing up in such a grey world.

Covered.

Isolated.

Musicless.

Artless.

Thoughtless.

Walking through my neighbourhood, I see people laughing on patios.

Rosy-cheeked.

Fur-coated.

Bare-faced.

The masked server limps from table to table.

I wonder if he makes rent with this job,

or does he limp his way to another after this shift?

Probably.

Our broken bodies come from overwork lately.

The patio-d diners look well-fed, rested.

The difference in health between them sickens me.

I can no longer leave the house without feeling ill.

*

I go to the camera store with Liam and cry on the subway.

*

The signs are dystopian.


I remember in February when we flew back from Las Vegas. 
The Covid 19 signs were first in the airport on the Canadian side. 
“Did we miss something?”
“It only applies to travellers from Overseas, nothing to worry about.”

*

I feel sick and the world spins and derealization hits and I can’t breathe.

Did we die then?

Maybe we’re perpetually landing.

Las Vegas was the trip to beat all trips.

Maybe we burnt out in the desert and our bones are lying picked by buzzards in the heat.

Our rental car disappearing in the sand skidding off route 66.

Wouldn’t that be a beautiful end?

Instead, this.

The grey.

The mindless acceptance of a horrible future of yeses.


Mundane workdays or lack thereof.

I think of Dickensian London.

I think of Dickens.

I think of fog.

I think.

When this hit I had such hope.

There was a beautiful chance.

We could rebuild.

Change how we looked at one another.

We were all responsible for each others’ health.

It was so clear.

It was world-wide.

How could this not unite us?

But instead more division.

Corporations seized the opportunity to turn the workers into “essentials”

With no option to turn down work,

Conditions deteriorate.

Jobs become as bleak as possible.

“You’re lucky to be working”

Why can’t we change that cry?

We are admittedly expendable as a working class

proven time and again

We are moving into an age that doesn’t need people

The age of technological advancement is here.

“You’re lucky to be working”

Lucky to have once had a job you might have liked

Still grievously underpaying you

Getting paid the same average hourly rate a person made in the 1970s

Less even

It’s gone now

What do we tell the children?

Why are they in school?

What are they working towards?

If we haven’t figured out a future

Why waste anyone’s time?

Admit there is no normalcy

Rewrite the system

It’s broken

We’re all

just

broken

And so I sit.

I look at all the people.

Wandering around.

Buying things

For guests they can’t have over.

Getting dressed up

For a semblance of the past we used to have.

False promises from government

Timelines that don’t happen.

Or shift and drift.

Like sand over bones.

MPs and MPPs sit cozy with families

All together.

Children smiling.

Laughing.

Well-fed.

Happy.

Un-masked.

But not you.

That’s for other people only.