Thursday Night Zoom Call

Artwork by Alex Malcombe.

The faces of my friends 

seem to be the only 

antidote for a loneliness 

that paints itself in streaks

across my room. I watch 

their eyes & my own 

firework with laughter. 

Afterwards the corners 

of my mouth ache from 

stretching across acres 

of a feeling that eludes 

despair. Afterwards

I watch everyone I love 

split apart from me 

slowly.

Something isn’t 

right. In my heart

the afterlife of a 

vacancy expands

to fill my chest.

One day I woke 

up & I was a shell 

of a person. 

You might ask me 

how that works. How,

at every stoplight, one

loses the will to live.  

& I will say, Somewhere

along the way I lost it.

Any ability to trace 

the wrinkles around

my thumb. Any ability 

to lace brushstrokes 

over one another in

a pattern that makes 

sense.

In the pharmacy, I ask

for a prescription called

How to Be a Person 

Who Gives & Gives 

& Gives. I don’t think 

I can draw a straight line

through the thick forest 

that sits in the space 

between who we are 

now & who we were 

before the long fire. 

Each day I take in less 

joy than I ever have. 

Like a fish suffocating 

from too much air, 

like a bird coddled

in the hands of a child. 

& I promise I once knew

how to bear the warmth 

of the sun, but the rain 

won’t go away. It is this 

season forever. & it isn’t 

so much that everyone I 

love is elsewhere; it’s 

that I want to be whole 

again.