Two weeks later
and I feel trapped in reality.
I keep thinking about
that time last summer
when I saw the world was crooked
and I keep wondering
is it still?

Or was that an off kilter moment
on borrowed time?

Or was it,
an indication of times to come?

Or was it…

I find myself
in a hopeless dispair
and I keep looking for strength
to coincide my friends’
anger
frustrations
and anxieties
but my patience wears thin.

I sit by the window in my room everyday
and I stare at the house next door
that might as well blend in
with the endless gray of midwest skies.

And I don’t want to create
because this still feels
like a nightmare
I’m desperate
to wake from.

And I feel
my privilege and entitlement
in saying it that way
because even without all this
many people’s regular lives
are smaller cages
then the one I find myself in.

but truly…
I don’t want to leave my bed
anymore then this cough wants to leave me.

my thoughts oscillate
between dispair
and memories of the sun
of its warmth
the smell of salt
and long lazy days

when none of this

was real