Prologue

The grass here is yellow, not the yellow of corn, but the yellow of sunshine dulled by hanging clouds. A massive field of it sits diagonally from my bedroom window, across the barely double laned road running behind my house. This is the quiet part of town, where the biggest house and cows roam together as seamlessly as rich people and cows could. In front of the glowing field of yellow, there are trees. Many of them are still looking haggard from the rough winter but the younger’s have already begun sprouting leaves, waving hello to the world they’re just now becoming acquainted with. They don’t yet fear the horrors of fire, the horrors of storms, the atrocities coating human hands like blood that will soon be smeared down their brand new bark.

Commonly there are not many cars in the driveways, people bustling in and out, in and out, constantly making more and more money, at school working harder and harder, running ragged. Recently that has changed because of the outbreak of Corona Virus, or COVID-19. It started small, just in Wuhan, then all of China, then Italy and now, in America where were believed we were invisible. We were wrong. I know we were wrong because there are cars in every driveway that haven’t moved in days, some even weeks.

The orange Jeep down the road intrigues me; I haven’t seen it since the beginning of the summer last year, I wish to know its story but no human contact is allowed at this point. But I’m glad they were able to return home. Not that I would talk to them; people, though I love them, frighten me.

I bet its owner is a college student, an athletic but smart man or woman who went out of state for college. I hope they initially left to achieve their dreams of being a famous actor on Broadway or Hollywood, I sometimes find myself weaving their life for them in my head, though I’ve never seen their face or heard their voice. It’s a peculiar practice but it entertains the mind of a morbidly poetic writer that somehow found it’s home atop my shoulders.

An ambulance drove by, just a few minutes ago, it lights flashing red(danger) and blue (safety), I’ve always been perplexed by the colors; is the red a warning, the blue a soothing? It’s as if someone yelled “You are to die! But I will hold your hand on the way”. Terrifyingly morbid, I know. But that’s how my mind works I suppose, it works in frighteningly fast bursts of joy and happiness, solemnly and mordantly all in a single breath. The simplest things become so perplex to me, the colors of the ambulance, the silence of the world right now, the voice in my head that keeps telling me and keep telling me something, it’s simple but hard to explain. It’s yelling DANGER DANGER as if there were a man behind me with a knife, poised for attack-- but every time I twist around in alarm... The only thing looking back is the big blue sky.