A Moment’s Reprieve

20th May 2020

You hadn’t really seen a human in months. Sure, you discovered “Zoom” and your bookclub evolved into a weekly poetry meeting of such lovely women you only saw monthly before. You smile under your mask at the bodega workers and folks you pass in the street, but you’re never sure if anyone can see that your eyes are smiling. Twice now you even saw a face you knew and it was like sparklers had been lit in all the streets to celebrate your revolutionary return to society! But it was for such a brief moment. 

It has also been over three months since I was a “working” subject in the world. Perhaps most importantly––thank god for the stress relief of unemployment now and some small semblance of bank savings––my anxiety has identified itself as being purely my own. Even if you still have to spend days sitting with it, it is nice to see that the vibrating void inside of you will be there regardless. Regardless of anything you do or anything you don’t do. 

More tangibly, it has been longer than three months since I felt the touch of another human. Or, it had been that long. Not so many hours ago, a favorite human appeared again. And, for 24 hours or so, it was like the pandemic was as far away and obscure as the many, many weeks of distance. To touch a human body again was both strange and yet completely familiar. The curves of that body you always remembered so well; every time your fingers felt that skin before seemed like all atoms reveled in your contiguous epidermal reunion. 

This time, though, was . . . just simply jovial. To see again was to laugh again. To hold that body was to remember what it felt like to acknowledge the external world. To listen to stories and share tales of life were exciting again. And to lay together and sit beside one another was as if calmness was rewarded with the smiling ease of resting in the comfort of your friend. Simple. Without stress. Because maybe the catastrophe of the world let you finally return to your ability to live the in moment––because each is likely the last, in the end. And that feels better. 

Then, when I returned to my abode of solitary respite again, there too I found that everything felt exciting and familiar and necessary yet unchanged: where it is as though you cannot get enough of life again and everything feels good. Every piece and breath is finite, but together they make up a wonderful life you so often forgot the importance of each part: how every part fits to help build your whole, no matter how many holes you know will always be there.