We’ve had two years of dread.
What started as a distant threat
landed on us casual nonchalants
with blunt force.
Daddy, we shake our heads,
bewildered by death tallies,
battling shadows unfurling around
the edges of our memories.
Time flows through us,
blurring the edges of days
bleeding the grief of today
into the unease of tomorrow.
But Daddy, it is always today.
Our hands are chapped and
isopropyl perfumes our ways.
We walk in undulating circles
forced to manoeuvre through
closed spaces.
Fear stalks us outside,
maskless and eyeless,
yet eyes are all we see.
Daddy,
a woman mistook me
for her friend.
She smiled and greeted me,
a moment of misconnection,
a burst of warmth between
strangers, a beacon,
a point of return
in a sea of muddled memories
enduring in these dread times.