It’s been years since anyone stepped outside without a mask, and even as I crack open the door, I lift up my arm to shield my mouth and nose. No one could have guessed how far this pandemic could have gone, how air filters could have flown off the shelves, how no one was safe. The death tolls reached a peak so high the government mandated cremation as the only disposal method of deceased bodies. My family was one of the lucky ones; we only have one urn on the mantle.

The news broadcast just came across the screen. The virus has officially been wiped from Earth’s face, and we as humans can resume our normal life. But what is normal at this point?

Across the street, I see others emerging from their homes, tans around their mouths where masks have resided for months on end. One pair of neighbors cautiously approaches each other, maintaining at least six feet of space between them as they talk. Despite everything, there’s a fear in all of us you can’t just take away by proclaiming we’re clean. It might take years before everyone acts normal, and even then, only those who don’t remember this pandemic will have no scars.

I turn around and take a look at my house, the prison I’ve been chained by fear to for months. I’ve grown to hate its walls, the granite counters, vaulted ceilings, and cracked baseboards. Flaws I never would have noticed before are now engrained into my memory from hours I would lie on the ground, gazing around at whichever room I happened to be in at the time. Each day I would wake up late because rising early meant more hours to fill. Nothing changes when you sit at home and gaze at the hopeless stars in the shapes of your ceiling.

No one was sure when it would all end, and now that it has, I feel more lost than when I was stuck inside. Quarantined, I had walls to surround me, limits that confined me and made me secure. Now, there are no limits except those I set for myself, and those are even more frightening.

It’s June. Or December. Time doesn’t really matter anymore after you stop working--days and months are simplified to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Plain granola crumbs, brown salad, cheap overcooked chicken.

I emerge outside. The weather is hot, or maybe cold. Either way, I’m pale, malnourished. During the many months of quarantine, I manage to graduate college online. Virtual graduation. I throw my fake hat up in the air and the Dean shakes my digitalized hand, squirting a glob of hand sanitizer as he moves on to the next video caller.

I don’t have a job--perhaps I won’t have one for years. I emerge outside, in the tentatively buzzing city, as someone who will need to beg for someone else’s job. On my hands and on my knees. I’ll be wearing gloves and knee pads, obviously. The guy telling me no will wear a mask, and I will pretend that I didn’t understand him. Thank you, I will say. I really needed this.

My college girlfriend breaks up with me. Frankly, it is straight out of nowhere. She is quarantined in her apartment and I am quarantined in mine and we Facetime constantly, repeating to ourselves that we are stronger than the virus. “I’ve never wanted you so badly,” I remember saying.

A long pause.

“I think,” she says, “I’m learning to live without you.”

I know that most college relationships are destined to end, but it’s supposed to be messy, drawn out; someone moving to the other side of the country, an affair, a secret-- not a clinically clean cut. I drive to her apartment at two in the morning during quarantine and she refuses to let me in. It isn’t safe. I could be infected, or maybe she is. Perhaps she is afraid that we would both get sick, unable to care for one another. Dying together, apart.

I emerge outside, and the streets are clean, not out of love, but out of fear. Nature is beautiful; the parks are exactly the same. Someone had maintained the bushes, the wild grass. Roaming about, I visit the cemetery. I feel bigger than usual, painfully aware of every step I take.

My grandmother is dead, years ago from cancer, before the pandemic. I kneel at her tombstone which is cleaner than anything else on earth and find myself afraid to touch it. Who else might have touched her grave? What horrible bacteria is stuck to the engravements of her name?

I leave after an hour, ashamed. It’s raining. Or maybe it’s snowing. I have no idea the month, the season, or the year. If I should be carrying an umbrella or wearing a parka. Only people with jobs and girlfriends and grandmothers are capable of keeping track of these things. I am unprepared for the weather. My body is naked in my unknowing. I have no control, yet in a way, nothing has control over me. It is a maddening feeling. I emerge outside, in the clean streets of the city, and search for the things that can control me.

Rip. Slash. Tear. The square of toilet paper in my hands is no more, torn to fractures and fractures of unusable small paper strips. I grin with some sort of savage pleasure. Finally, after this wretched disease, stocks of toilet paper are in abundance. I can use as much of it as I please.

No more hiding behind screens, no more coughs muted, unheard. No more video calls, the glazed expressions in their eyes. I can finally see you, face to face, and tell you everything that was lost.

Collaboration between @libbythepencil and @littlesquiddie

I haven't left my house in three weeks.

The air is stale,

my legs are weak,

and i don't know what day it is.

I made myself a cup of coffee today,

and as the caffeine zinged through my veins

i realized that i had forgotten what it felt like,

to be alive.

My grandfather passed three months ago,

and our chickens two days after that.

I'm not sure which loss was greater.

I don't recall the last time i washed my hair.

Our well hasn't yet run dry,

but I'm nearly out of shampoo.

The run on the banks was our last bit of news from outside.

Networks stopped airing a while ago,

but we didn't lose power.

We are lucky.

I heard that in the cities,

looting is the only way to survive,

though it'll get you killed pretty quickly.

My roommate stopped going to work weeks ago,

and i,

months.

She's a nurse.

One of the last.

We are sure this must be the end.

As i drain the last dregs of my coffee,

she decides to open a window,

hoping to capture a breeze.

Sirens.

They stopped blaring ages ago,

so there must be a new bit of news.

Death toll, maybe?

Or, dare i hope,

a vaccination?

A cure?

Salvation?

We do catch a faint breeze, and with it,

voices carry.

Screams of joy,

neighbors sobbing, doors opening and

slamming shut behind emerging bodies.

We look to each other,

and Amber scrambles for the remote,

flipping on our long ignored television set.

Across every channel,

the same message:

A vaccine has been developed.

The disease has run its course.

We're saved.

Our families aren't,

nor our neighbors,

but we,

Amber and i, and all those remaining,

are saved.

We move in droves to our assigned vaccination locations,

we take showers and banks open their doors and grocery stores are staffed once again,

and we roll up our sleeves,

thank God for our lives,

and get to work.

Cleanup takes months,

perhaps years,

it's hard to remember where we started,

hard to differentiate between rebuilding efforts and genuine improvement,

but after a time,

the world runs smoothly again.

Smoother than it has ever run before,

and i think to myself,

that maybe it was the end after all.

And maybe we needed that ending,

if only to forge a new beginning.

There are cracks in the road that no one will fill. There are leaves fallen over, spotted and translucent. Your skin breathes just as loud as the lungs we’ve buried. We’ve lost our greenhouses.

Train tracks trail behind the pollution, increasing again, without your permission.

Cathartic for one week. Chaos for 6 years. Crime rates grow faster than the recovered and the dead.

Our frailty is so obvious now. Raise those borders. De-globalize. Trust only ourselves. Close the countries. End the transport of goods. Trust only our own production of disease and pain. Because what we make will never be as bad as what others can do to us. Because we are more than them. Because we will fault everyone except us. We were only scared once our birds fell out of the sky. Once the tingle was felt in our own throats. Once fear was only me and you. Because those people I never see don’t matter, they won’t reach us here. Where these mouths fall are uncertain. Something slimy stirs, swirls, slinks along our legs. High pitched sounds fall from our high rise buildings. The applause ends.

Shoes litter the sidewalks. Single file line grave markers. Candles are never lit. These funerals all gathered into one day would require forest fires to commemorate them. Burn our buildings, rid us of this collective memory.

Underneath bridges we have homes. They grow into their own little cities.

Grandiose stories for our grandchildren. Because we were never able to be grandchildren ourselves.

How will these shoes ever fit my feet again? Will these pants wrap around this waist again?

They won’t reach us here.

Bundled onto roads, no pockets to hold onto anything. The sky is so clean today. We’ve never seen the sun without its struggle against the dark smoke of pollution.

Pale faces stretch forth into sunlight,

Earth cautiously sighs winds of relief, "It is over!" chorus the sea of humanity,

Flame of plague burned out in disbelief.

But what lingers behind smells foul,

Sparks anew ashes fluttering in air,

As unseen as the minuscule germ,

That merely days before resided there.

Smiles abound but only on masks,

For we tremble fearful beneath,

Leaders of power spout pleasantries,

But the virus, distrust has bequeathed.

Arms reach outward to clasp hands,

Halt apace, bacterium occur in thoughts,

Lackadaisical stutters whilst retreating,

Tree of brotherhood sours and rots.

Silent rush dominos, just as it had before,

Each resume abiding within their worn abode,

New disease settles in, blanketing minds,

Fear trickles deep, fear foments panic-mode.

Not the apocalypse seers envisioned,

Yes streets barren, but alive merely hide,

But a fate worse than visit from reaper,

Isolated indoors we self-buried alive.

Not all of us survived

Give us your poor and your sick

and we will regret to inform you

that you have a pre-existing condition

The tides of time churn

capitalism capitalizing

war makes economies

What did we learn?

Love me from a far and I will tell you...

I haven't changed.

Two soft feet hit the pavement. A breeze rustles bright golden hair. Wide doe-like dark brown eyes search the skies through long eyelashes. A large door stands behind her. She takes a small step forward and jumps back, for the dark pavement has had sun shining on it all day, and the child doesn’t recognize the sun can burn her tiny feet.

The date is July 16th, 2031. The outbreak had started years before Rosalie had even been born. She’d lost a brother she’d never known to it, before the State of Emergency had even been declared.

Her parents don’t talk about him a lot. They don’t talk a lot about anything.

Today, July 16th, is the first time Rosalie has left the suburban white condo, though it’s not so white anymore. Years of wear and tear with no maintenance have left it more a dusty grey colour.

Vaccinations for every member of the household had been mailed a month ago. She didn’t much like the needle, but she didn’t complain. It hurt, but it didn’t hurt that much. She didn’t understand why her parents had cried when they’d given themselves the vaccines.

Now, they’d waited the recommended period of time, even a little longer, her parents had decided it was time. They stand behind her now, in the doorway. Their masks are on, gloves too, and they seem hesitant.

Rosalie remembers the dainty slippers in her hand. They’re blue, race cars on them. They’re too small for her. She puts them on anyway. Then, she takes a step again, into the sunshine.

She feels its warmth on her rosy pale cheeks. It blinds her when she looks up. She doesn’t care. Her face breaks out into a smile. She looks to the plot of dirt she’s been told was a garden. It was her mother's happy place. Now it is dead and desolate, save for one small weed. It’s green and has three soft-looking leaves. It clings to the sidewalk for support. She crouches and touches one of the leaves. It feels like it should. Soft. Fragile.

Alive.

She looks up to realize that other people who live in the cul-de-sac are on their lawns as well, taking in a world they’ve been deprived of for eleven years. There’s silence except for the leaves rustling.

“It’s over.” Says the elderly man who lives next to Rosalie. He’d lost his wife and daughter to the virus. “It’s finally over.” His voice breaks. The neighbors across from them start clapping. Yelling and whooping. Roslie backs away, scared by what appears to her to be an aggressive gesture. Soon, as everyone joins in, she realizes it’s a good thing. So, underneath the sunshine and the blue sky and clouds, with a backdrop of muted houses, lawns devoid of life, her brother’s shoes and her parents tears, she puts her tiny fragile hands together. Slowly at first, and then faster, she claps. The neighborhood follows suit, and soon the echoes of their claps and cheers are all anyone can hear.

It’s a virus, I was heard to repeat often, like the flu. We don’t pay this much attention to all the people passing around the flu and dying. Tens of thousands of people die of the flu every year. Why the heck are we paying so much attention to this? It’s not like people are getting something new and horrible like some skin eating disease or their organs melting, or bleeding from every pore of their bodies. That, that I would understand. But a respiratory infection? If we get this excited for a respiratory illness, how are we ever going to live normally again? The flu happens every year. Are we going to change our whole way of being now because of viruses? We were doing fine just as we were, I was heard to comment more than once.

Until, one day, I met a dear friend and her husband in a parking lot. Her husband was a lawyer with offices in China, the Philippines and Japan. We got to talking (six feet apart), and I was fussing, as I was wont to do: this is so ridiculous given the extreme lack of attention we give the flu every year and what’s going to happen in the future? Are we going to stop living every flu season? Her husband shut me down immediately. His contact in China had asked him what story we were being told and upon hearing the response, he said, we were being fed an extremely watered down version of their new reality. That, in fact, hundreds of thousands had succumbed to the disease. That crematoriums that had once operated only three times a week were working 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And the bodies were still piling up.

Well, that sobered me up quite a bit. I didn’t see that information anywhere and since I am not one to gossip or pass along knowledge that I cannot verify, I said nothing to anyone except my immediate family.

We followed the various new mandates. I got my sewing machine from the attic and started making cotton face masks. I only left the house once a week to buy groceries and bring goodies to my mom who lived about 45 minutes away in a neighboring state, (no hugs or kisses, maintaining a distance of six feet). And every day I watched the number of infected and dead grow, although I refused to watch the news or scroll social media with morbid interest, as most of my friends and family were doing. I would read various online newspapers from around the world in the morning and in the evening, but that was it. My husband worked on various garden projects – thank goodness it was spring, I thought at the time. I did a lot of baking – so I also did a lot of running. I took free online classes. I read. I wrote. I waited.

The first death that touched me was early on. My best friend’s brother died of Covid-19 some three weeks into the country taking the virus more seriously; no one had any idea where he got it. He was in a small town in the middle of nowhere. A few weeks later, my mom called to say her cousin’s daughter was in the ICU, in a medically-induced coma. Covid-19. A couple of months after that, a former student’s entire family of four came down with it despite all her many precautions (as an immunocompromised survivor of two bouts of cancer). Only her husband survived. And so it went…

And now, it’s spring again. It was so lovely to go outside today. All those pictures I saw of which I was deeply skeptical during the Pandemic of 2020, well, it turns out they were right. When the virus known as humanity was confined to home, it’s host, the earth, actually found it’s health improved. Waterways ran with clearer water than they had in decades. Air pollution dropped to levels unseen since before the Industrial Revolution. It appears the damage to the ozone layer could not be reversed, but it stopped worsening. The polar ice caps seemed to slow their melting. Species that were thought to be going extinct had a renaissance. To me, the sky above seems bluer…but it may just be a new appreciation for something once taken for granted.

The social world, of course, is very different as well. I can’t believe it’s only been 15 months since I first heard of Covid-19. Everyone is required to wear a mask nowadays; it’s the law. And if you are sick, you cannot go to public places. Unlike in the pre-Pandemic days, when jobs encouraged you to work sick, now people who cannot work from home are forbidden to work sick and work places are fined by the government if they fire workers for not working sick. Businesses are not required to pay indefinite sick leave, but they have to offer some. The government supplements that as well. There are now volunteer groups – and some government-sponsored groups – that you can call who will deliver food and medicine if you live alone and cannot get out due to illness.

Many businesses closed their offices permanently because they discovered they could work with equal efficiency and less chance for spreading disease with workers at home. Almost all of New York’s skyscrapers are empty now. Offices that do exist all have very spacious layouts – including the DMV and other government facilities. All hospitals and many large corporations are government-owned. They couldn’t survive without government loans and they couldn’t pay the loans back. Or at least, they haven’t yet. Cruises are a thing of the past. Too many sanitary and social distancing issues. Very few airlines remain, but the ones that do are all spacious, which is a positive outcome, I think. Unfortunately, all travel is domestic only – and even that just opened up again last month. Most countries continue to maintain closed borders except for business and government travel. And cargo, of course.

Restaurants are few and far between. Industrial kitchens had to be expanded to maintain the new, post-Pandemic distancing laws. Most still live off take-out and delivery since serving is impossible…although there are some restaurants that have introduced the use of robots to serve. I am dying to go to one, but there are none where we live, yet.

We are allowed to take a daily walk or run. Those of us whose first name starts with D and birth year ends with seven are allowed to run between the hours of 7 and 8 am, Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays in my town. With the new restrictions, my husband and I can never walk together anymore, but at least we can get out. And we do video workouts together at home. None of the gyms were able to reopen after the Pandemic. They were seen as too dangerous to public health. (Those with pools are open for swimming, but you have to register for the limited slots.) So, too, all the massive indoor arenas. Many were repurposed as hospitals; others were simply shuttered. Smaller venues and movie theaters had the option to reopen if they renovated their layouts to maintain a distance of six feet between each chair. But what would be the point? No one is permitted to do theater anymore. You have to get too close to a fellow actor. And you can’t make a movie if you can’t get within six feet of someone. Movie theater attendance was dying before the Pandemic anyway. Streaming was preferred. Unfortunately, all the tv dramas and reality shows are repeats now. No new shows can tape except news programs or comedy shows that keep guests six feet away from the host and each other. There has been a growth in musical performances online with singers singing from their homes. Some theatrical performances have tried that as well, but they leave something to be desired. So, basically, everyone binge watches all the programs created before the Pandemic of 2020.

Team sports are a thing of the past. Tennis, biking, ping pong and swimming are on the rise. Running, of course. The Olympics have been terminated indefinitely. So, too, the World Cup, the European Cup, and all the other championships of team sports. All schools are virtual now. Teachers are honing their virtual teaching skills and lessons are all online for grades K-university. Many more parents are homeschooling. It is a shame though: Social skills were already dying before the Pandemic; they will fast become a thing of the past, I suspect.

Elections were cancelled last fall, of course. No one could leave their homes and online voting was deemed precarious; and, ultimately, they seemed unnecessary in such trying times. We have a tele-government now. Everyone tunes in avidly every day at noon to hear the updates about this season’s flu (worse than last year’s Covid-19), new mandates, new laws. The former Constitution was clearly unable to support the new reality, and was nullified some eight months into the Pandemic. Not clear when or if we will have a new one any time soon. Few are all that concerned with it around here.

Our shopping day is Tuesday. In order to discourage hoarding and to ensure there is enough for everyone on their given shopping day, purchases are limited to two items per family. There are fewer markets and they don’t have near the variety they once did, but at least there is food. There was a period during the worst days of the Pandemic when there was not enough. There weren’t enough people producing around the world or in the US; there weren’t enough people to transport; there weren’t enough people willing or able to show up to work to stock shelves and sell... There were too many sick or dying. It was a dark period. There was some rioting and looting, but not much. People were as afraid of getting Covid-19 as they were of not having enough to feed themselves and their families. Consequently, many died alone in their homes of starvation. When federal law forbade crossing state borders, I was no longer able to help my mother. When she stopped answering her phone, a part of me died.