Social Distancing
I sniff the tomatoes rotting
on the ledge, hope
more groceries come tomorrow.
This hack in my chest––
an old world hex. I check
the common symptoms, the news
before bed, wait for fever.
In the morning, my cat
stretches out across the hot dust
of window light and rests
his chin upon my wrist.
I lay bare these thousand weeks
of solitude, these thousand
leaves of grass, forget
the thousand hairs
shed, the thousand more
we buzzed away. What comes
at night is less than sleep, less
than a hickey, or the world
beyond this blackened window.
It’s the us we stare through
as we try to see.