Quarantine

It’s quiet.

so quiet I want

to scream

just to fill up

the empty space

around me.

Something hurts.

But I can’t figure out where,

or what.

But it hurts so much

I want to disappear,

or something.

I don’t remember

The Before Times,

in the way you start to lose

the faces of people you

once knew, now dead.

But I can’t help the way my mind forgets.

I think of thousands of strangers

spending so much time

in the painful quiet too.

Which of them have given

into the screams?

And into the disappearing?

Which of them have

let go of the longings for before?

For the times when loneliness was

only ever experienced

in the company of others.

The times where quiet didn’t exist.

I’m asking myself questions

I never have, like

why am I crying

for the times

when I didn’t find joy

in a daily walk,

or fall blissfully into the

ease of hugging a loved one?

Why do I want to rage

For the times when I could barely

gasp for air,

always inhaling for more,

more?

Leaving empty spaces

empty

is a skill

I never knew.

Before.