A Year

I have some bad news, she writes, Sunday morning and the air is sweltering, but my steps on the pavement reliable, steady. I have started the morning happy. There's someone else. It's been going on for months. I'm just destroyed. I stop running. Think about how these news always seem to come with the apology at the start. (I'm sorry to have to ruin this for you.) I want to go to Brooklyn and punch him. Does he not see this year is bad enough as it is? But sure, it follows the fashion. 

We meet her later in the park, hot beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon, and when we spread out picnic blankets to sit six feet apart it feels like any other summer day this year, where the biggest concern is a deadly pandemic. I want to hug her but we just stare at each other and shrug. I haven't slept in two days. We pour her a big cup of wine. Ten years together swirls in the drain, wondering which way to go. All the threads that tie them together, that braided around them and it's hard to know what belongs to whom. I want to punch him more than ever. Before it gets dark, she gets back on her bike, goes home. We have nowhere else to go. This year makes fools of us, and we cannot pack our bags, cannot leave. We wish her sleep, if nothing else.

Along the water, a young couple gets engaged. The irony seems redundant. 

When I make my way back across the bridge, after dusk has turned on the twinkling lights of Manhattan, it rains. I cry behind the brightly colored mask I wear, forget how to push myself forward. All I needed was a hug. Instead this year is one long slap in the face. If you could tell us the lesson we're meant to be learning, perhaps we could get through this quicker.