Everyone Listened to Prince
For the longest time I tried to see joy in the robin’s egg or purple cloud at dawn.
The sound of a stapler. The sweat on the back of my neck.
I looked out the window and there was a cardinal and a garbage truck.
I said, Hey cardinal. I said, Hey garbage truck.
I wanted to bond with everything to make sure I was still alive
or that there was still life in my breath.
This was when the windows were closed all the time and everyone worried about getting sick
and then everyone wondered about being dead.
I played basketball with my kids and we scraped our knees and I got angry
and listened to Prince. Everyone listened to Prince.
Everyone worried about getting sick and even the cows were very far away.
It did something to me, and I’m still not sure if I can undo what it did to me
because I don’t feel nostalgia anymore.
It’s the end of nostalgia.
That is what the pandemic did to me
even though I walked into swimming holes and swam across them
to make sure my lungs still had lung power.
I tried to make joy something tiny,
so tiny I could put it in a grain of sand like a galaxy, one galaxy in a grain of sand, to feel joy.
To feel feel joy joy.
But all the forces of that galaxy were against me
and of course, it wasn’t just me it was everyone, all of us,
trying to do the same thing or not, but I was.
I tried really hard to remember all the beautiful things
like an out of tune piano
and then an Elton John song the one called I’ve seen that movie too.
Or the time I went down to the dock, lied down on the hot wood
and let the splinters try and get into my flesh but they didn’t get into my flesh.
I tried to remember when I held her hand for the first time
and sparks from the campfire landed on my arm and burned it
so hot that I ran into the sky and tried to stay there to cool down.
That’s what the disease did. It did not let me stay there,
up there in the clouds in the stars in the meteors ripping apart space.
Nostalgia became impossible
and I’m still trying to figure out if this is a good thing.
Today I remember giving my daughter the silent treatment for twenty minutes
when she pissed me off.
Then I remember eating pizza on an outdoor patio somewhere in New Hampshire with her.
I remember thinking she is so far away from me and it is all my fault.
At least I remember, though.
At least I am sad and I don’t remember
where I put my mask
or if the virus comes to my house
will I put it on ever again.
