31. Andreas Keller + Kate Ruebenson

A firing squad would at least be quick.
Aren't blindfolds more dignified than face masks?
I smell my own breath too often now, mixed with polypropylene fibers.
I smell the false sense of security in a cloud of Lysol and Purell
My fingers: in another time, pinched & prodded the physical, dry now, key callused, type tired
57 days in a state of emergency
124 days without seeing them, their septuagenarian chests against my thirty-year-old one.
How cruel to be forced to show my love by not being there for them.
Warm, white light, traded with the bright blue of screens in hallways, kitchens, imprinted on retinas
The TV always on, always on mute, always bad news
You practice holding the pages of a favorite novel, returning to sentences, significance
Anything will do, anything that is not a history book written by a virus
A virus another name for plot twist -- and 
This is not a sentence, it’s a novel