The brightest part of my day comes at 7pm. Just as the dusk creeps up to wrap the city in its daily embrace, the desolate air fills with sound. Pots and pans and claps ring from balconies and rooftops and I too arrive at my window with a voice and a purpose.
This seems the only moment I can guarantee with any consistency. The evening that follows brings some twisted comfort too. It helps knowing the lights in the windows across the way belong to the people from 7pm. I call them the good people. My neighbourhood is full of good people, I say, as I hold my tea between my hands and try not to think too hard about the sick people.
I try to find some comfort in the things I know for certain. Everyone is home, unless they are heroes or being helped by heroes. Everyone is home. Nobody is ordering a vodka soda at a bar. Nobody is sitting in a restaurant smearing a pat of butter on a slice of appetizer sourdough. Nobody is being rude to a waitress, or shoving through a crowd at the club. Nobody is yelling at a sports game. Nobody is anywhere but here, in our homes, sitting in dim light watching something on a screen, waiting. Waiting for someone to tell us it’s okay. For someone to call us, and tell us they love us. Waiting for a sign, or a distraction.
I imagine brushing past the man at the end of the cereal aisle, the sleeve of his sweater touching mine with a spark of static denouncing the contact. It’s no use though. He’s out of reach and the voice on the PA reminds us, these measures are in place to keep us safe. But the voice doesn’t know that the only time I feel safe is in someone’s arms.
I keep dreaming of being in the back of a cab with my best friend. Laughing into the foggy window after too many glasses of wine and not enough sourdough. Dreaming of accidentally touching hands with someone on a dance floor or swaying against lanky bodies in the crowd of a concert.
I never even have cash on me, but I miss paying with it. I want to hand a cashier a bill and ask for quarters—not even because I need them for laundry, just because there’s been so much change and I need something to hold onto that’s more concrete than the tap of a card and an aversion of the eyes.
It doesn’t feel like the end of the world. No, it’s a little heavier, and a little emptier than that. It feels like we’ve all become children to the only people who can help us. Like we’ve all got to follow the rules we’ve spent our whole lives growing up to break. Like we’re all thirteen again and our parents have sent us to our rooms.
It’s just that I want to see your face in dimensions that don’t fit in the palm of my hand. I need you near because I think I’ve forgotten what skin on skin feels like. And for fuck’s sake I just want to look into a pair of eyes for longer than it takes me to say, “That’ll be on debit.”
It’s just that the loveliest in-person conversation I’ve had in weeks was asking a man on the street where he got his toilet paper and he hugged it to his chest and said, “It’s gold.” I laughed and agreed with him, but in my head I was thinking, “I want someone to hug me like that.” Yes, hug me like you’ve been looking for me for weeks. Like I’m soft, and rare, and essential. Hug me like 3-ply gold. One ply for each string I’m hanging on by.