Fog lights

I have forgotten what the beach tastes like at the roof of my tongue

as I inhale the ocean in all her might.

I have forgotten what it feels like to have sand sprinkled on my toes

I don’t remember what the rain smells like anymore.

I had a dry cough the day we entered partial lockdown.

On the nights when I couldn’t sleep,

I watched the apartment lights glow like constellations after midnight.

I think no one slept that night.

I watched siblings quarrel in the apartment across the swimming pool

and a couple have dinner in their balcony.

We always complained of the glass doors

And their apparent lack of privacy.

Not today.

Today, it’s the reason I’m getting through the night.

My hands fumble in the dark for anything that tastes like daylight.

My skin starts to crave the touch of sunrise at midnight.

My breath holds herself to the moonlight.

And my lungs collapse into herself every night.

And when 2020 becomes synonomous to Murphy’s law,

I remind myself;

I think when we finally open our doors,

the first batch of air will feel like the calm after the storm

that settles the soot into the creases of our palms like a bad memory.

I think when it’s finally over,

and the tattered woodboards and the glass shards collect in our driveway,

our palms will grip the steering wheel in terror,

watching the past kick up ash in her wake through the rear view mirror,

leaving traces of her storm like the weather;

I think when we finally touch the streets and

let the windows down,

the first touch of sunrise will feel like a new decade after a nightstorm.

Our eyes will bathe in the weekend sun,

in light of

a bad run.

I think when we can finally dance barefoot in the forest and let the grass cuddle our bellies as we rest with our ears to the dirt

and whisper apologies to Earth,

I think she’d tell us we are a decade too late,

and I think we will hear her bloom in unimaginable ways.

And maybe if we are deemed worthy enough,

our hands will erase damage from muscle memory,

And maybe if we still remember to hold each other to the light,

the fog lights will lead us back home at night.