the return

lately, i’ve found myself in a cycle of watching the same stories over and over.

i inhabit the lives of my favorite characters; curled up on the corner of their sofa, sitting just out of frame at the bar, dancing to bossa nova in bali.

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i don’t want to leave these worlds where people are in relationship and not in isolation.

so i rewind and restart; i trace the story over again, and murmur the familiar lines; my heart still laughing and crying like that first time.

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what am i returning to? why am i in search of return?

muir beach.

weeks past the year anniversary of living in relative isolation, i am still bracing for the impact of all this time away.

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i feel it in pieces, like my hand is feeling for the parts of something broken:

what it means to be far from people you love.

what it means to be close to people you feel loved by.

what it means to be alone.

what it means to be lonely.

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i wake up. i toast bread. i eat oranges.

i turn off my camera. i type out my notes. i leave the meeting. i sigh.

i open the door. i go outside. i get on my bike. i sit in the grass. i sit in the sun.

i close the door. i lay on my bed. i stare at a screen.

this is my life, mostly.

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i crave a shake-up, i crave the unsettling, i crave the unnerving.

i want to be shaken, i want to be jostled, i want to be surprised.

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i am caught between a strong desire to run within the limited reach of the pandemic, and an even stronger desire to lay in bed until it is all over.

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yet still, i am convinced that the end is coming-

slow, and stalling, and sudden.

the end is coming.

sand prints

but this end-

is it the push of a button, a cycle interrupted and then started over?

or is this ending a beginning of its own;

the familiar and unfamiliar asleep in the same bed, growing from the same source, blooming its own entangled color?

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and does it even matter?

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if nothing can ever be what it once was, then all that is left is a force of habit:

small practices repeated to guide and shape a moment,

small stories rewound to provoke a feeling.

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all that is left is the bracing- the arms over the head, the knees tucked;

the end, relief, soil overturned for new leaves.

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