2020

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.