2:34 a.m.

I think I'm already awake when the phone whirs, but in retrospect it must have been what woke me. Stumbling in the middle of the night can feel so much like falling into the depths of the abyss, when if only it was a little bit lighter, you'd find your footing again. Distance is cruel when we need its opposite, freedom burns when we need to be held. When my mother was my age, she had already lost a parent, she was carrying a sprawled family on her back and paying the bills with pennies she stretched into dollar bills, I model my self-reliance on her impossible fortitude, but we are not creatures made to live without touch, it breaks us when we forget it could. The street was so empty outside, a cold rain washing over the avenue, I tried to remember how to still a racing heart but it's harder with rivers in the way, it's harder with global pandemics sweeping over our brows, the best way I know how to do it is by way of fingertips and fingertips have been taken out of commission lately.

After he hangs up and falls asleep, I lie staring into the early morning for a while, trying to set the clocks right in my mind. Monday again, another week begins. They say this one may be the worst of it. You tell everyone else to be patient with and kind to themselves, but you think you are better than to stumble now. How we are reduced to our cores, we see ourselves without the gloss and sometimes it is a hard pill to swallow. As you drift off again, you turn off your alarm, allow yourself a reprieve. The weather forecast says Monday will be warm, and sunny, says the spring will sweep through your ghost town whether anyone is there for it or not, and what a relief it is, that some good things will come, whether or not you make them. That some good things will sweep through you, and all you have to do is be there when they do.