Small Moves in A Pandemic Summer

There's ash on the leaves of the hedge beyond the window. So fine and light between the fingers. The rancid stench of smoke is everywhere. Even after the fires are done, it will linger, they say. For months, they say. My late-spring vegetable starts stay too long in their containers and wilt. Between April and July, I do no painting or drawing or writing or sculpting. I become very, very still. Like prey camouflaging itself in tall grass, waiting for the threat to pass. Chris changes jobs. I obsess over the news: the numbers that keep rising, and grief so large and so hot—processing it feels like trying to swallow the sun. I do the laundry. I try to track down TP and soap. I brush the dog and think about what to cook. But it's still there. The sky becomes so clear, so quiet, and everything feels dangerous. A primal need for water seizes me. I fantasize about the ocean, swimming out, boundless. I watch countless shark videos on youtube. I learn yellow is the only color sharks can see, but am otherwise not reassured. We start making pizza at home every Friday night. I pour wine and turn the whole thing into an elaborate affair. The neighbors gather for their happy-hour and I hear their chatter outside, but I never join them because they don't wear masks and it is too much to listen so intimately to the problems of strangers right now and that makes me ashamed. I bring home a box of Japanese vegetables and then I cry. The owners of the farm where it came from are in their nineties. I wonder if my hair is falling out again. Christina pours half her wine bottle into a mason jar and delivers it to my porch with our favorite truffle potato chips. We share the wine and chips and spend the afternoon together on zoom while she bakes and I look up ingredient substitutions and we do our best lopsided impersonation of Summertime. I am washing my hands so often. I am worrying about fascism so often. When a friend's twin boys leave home for college, I dream about lending her a blue suitcase. The stifling heat of August arrives. Our old walls rumble and creak as a storm moves through one night. Chris thinks we should sleep downstairs, but I reassure him and we stay up late to marvel at each crash of thunder and lightning. Later we eat breakfast on our tiny stoop, intoxicated by the dewey breeze. The sky drizzles and clouds groan distantly, lazily. The world looks greener. I feel a sharp mixture of relief and longing. I realize I haven't hugged my friends in 6 months.