-- when we can’t visit our grandparents, or sip lattes at the window
tables of our favorite lunch-break cafes, or host birthday parties for our friends, or squeeze the tomatoes at the grocery store to test for optimal ripeness, or pay with the 20 dollar bill found inside the pocket of a coat you haven’t worn in a while, or borrow a book from a library, or glide the palm of your hand down the smooth wooden bannister of a stairwell, or sway on a crowded dancefloor because neither crowds or dancefloors exist anymore.
-- though a good night’s rest is hard to find between the blue-light glow of both stark reality news updates and mindless escape video reels, and the desperate urge to prolong those precious evening hours of not working, though you know the consequential exhaustion will find you by noon.
-- if you’re lucky enough to have a lover in your household bubble, and you manage to override the now instinctual 6-feet apart rule, and your skin isn’t sore to tender touch from the soap and sanitizer that become abrasive after the first fifteen applications each day.
Equity should be essential
-- but the canyons between social classes and races and genders and abilities seem to grow wider each time we are told to stay safe at home, but still no one acknowledges that as it stands, a safe home (with wi-fi and an income large enough to buy at least two weeks’ worth of groceries at once) is a privilege and not a right.
-- we are always encouraged to go outside, as long as we only get close to the trees while the earth refreshes our tangled minds and tense muscles, and we fill it up with disposable masks and various forms of sanitary single use plastic in exchange.
Technology is definitely essential
-- with the world as we know it hanging by the thread of charging cables as we Zoom and e-mail for our pay cheques, so we can Instacart our goods, and tele-whatever all our services, then spend quality Face-Time with our friends and family. Unless you are essential like me, then you risk the exposure to tangibly serve the strangers who need you, while still forgetting what the voices you love sound like when they’re not echoed through electronic speakers.
Isolation is now essential
-- for the sake of our health, despite the detriments to our wellness. All the loneliness of the world all apart, separated by walls except for when we stand just out of reach, weighs heavy on our collective spirits, and from a viral pandemic births a mental health crisis. Survival exists now between a rock and hard place.
Air is the epitome of essential
-- and perhaps if it wasn’t, this poem wouldn’t exist.
-- if there is anything we have learned, it is that.
