Did you remember to call your mother at the end of the world?

Would you have a word for her now, after a lifetime of silence?

Ambulance sirens I never paid attention to before, now hearing every wail,

Washed-out billboard signs by the highway, to buy a new pair of jeans, try a new cocktail

Constant motion city seizes in lockdown standstill, only the hospitals throb,

You feel your hands further and further away from touch and in that pause

Time suspends in what seems an impenetrable glance to life lived,

-First your teeth, then your face, then your hands, first your teeth, then...

sing happy birthday in your mind while you fully wash hands, taken for granted now real.

I imagine my mother sitting towards the sunset, by the sand, by the water,

I am gazing now out window views cut off from sun, from sky, from street

As if what I always thought I knew has now newly, strangely, just begun,

How many world-ends has she witnessed since you were born?

Is hand washing a different kind of ritual?