“Happy Birthday Twice” – A Pandemitime Poem

October 4, 2020

Stretched time
Maya and Noa home
our two daughters in their beds

again
Here there all at once. Child and adult.
Temporal inversions.

Inside this terrifying middle
eating Mark’s slow dinners slowly
Warm bread, just ripe fruit
delivered by a woman with her own daughters
sleeping in their own beds.

Revisiting each day of an opening act
March 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Friday the 13th
Where I was intending to be and where I was.

Narrative of an unwinding.
The city is ours.
The city owns us.
56 days in captivity so far.
My father calls it the Velcro padlock.
Fear
the only real authority —
when to stay and when to go.

Pages I’ve read as a measure of time
almonds eaten,
cleaning surfaces
cleaning again
bleach and more bleach
again