day 31 the one month anniversary

in the shower tonight,
my thoughts caught up with me.
her face, in agony, flashed in front of me.
there was no sound,
just the twisting of her mouth, and the
falling backwards
out of this life
out of life
as we knew it
but
we didn't know it
yet.

that would come later.
not much later
because the ringing inside of me, the pull of the alarm
had been sounding for some time.
so long, in fact,
that the anticipation of this catastrophe
became more like an undercurrent,
a drone in the airwaves,
a constant static.

and
everyone,
for so long,
told me it was just
anxiety.

now I know.
now I know I knew.
I'm the soot soaked yellow bird,
weak in the wings
watching everyone run from the center of the earth.

I don't want to be right.
I don't want to say, "see?"
I want to be wrong.
to shake my head from the spell of this time
and to wake up to
a world alive and healthy, people connected and respectful, animals, earth, ocean, and sky.
love, laughter, joy, wellness, and ease.

we're in a blur.
I facetimed ever so briefly with my old friend, Hollond...
in the midst of it I felt myself lean out over the edge
I touched the edges of a whirl of terror
I almost fell in to the center
I felt the panic whir past me, ruffling my skin
because.
an old friend, naturally, incites memory
of a time, a world, an innocence.
and
tonight
she was telling me about the challenges of
teaching her classroom,
keeping her kids safe,
what it's like for her in quarantine..
and it
all
suddenly
felt
real.

and I felt trapped.

a blink ago, we were goofing off in the dance studios at New World,
dancing around South Beach,
laughing through the streets of New York,
double dating,
being silly,
holding each other up through
anxiety, depression, recovery, triumphs, losses.

and blink,
the next step is fragile.
and we are suddenly old and vulnerable
and no one, none of us,
not our youthful selves
can be sure about how many days we have left
and how much suffering there will be.

not that we have ever known.
but now,
it is the storm whirring past
and it is blowing our hair
and
wobbling our legs beneath us.

I'm afraid today.

and I'm so so so very tired.
I barely got through a 45 minute improv class that was really good.
I'm just super fatigued.
and, so
I'm afraid.

and today is the one month anniversary of the loss of my sweet pea.