Maybe you’re hurling curses at the purple crocuses and eating dinner at three o’clock because who can keep track of time anymore and dinner is mostly Doritos and pancakes, and you’re afraid to drink that last carton of milk even though the use by date has come and gone, but you keep checking the date, anyway.

Maybe you thought you were ready, and you weren’t, you were born for this and you aren’t, you were safe and you’re not, and you mostly feel like a child hungry for milk and cookies and reassurance.

Maybe you’re a single mom with three children, and a mortgage and your Safeway shift begins at five a.m., and you’ve been wearing the same mask for a week and it’s impossible to believe you’ll survive this tremble of a time and what will happen to your children.

Maybe you ache of loneliness. Or maybe you’re most alive in solitude. They’re so different loneliness and solitude, one being associated with something missing, the other with something found. Maybe you’re in-between both spaces.

Maybe you’ve started a garden in your windowsill because it’s hard not to hope when you plant seeds, or at least that’s what you tell yourself, and then, your inexplicably overwhelmed with happiness when the seeds burst through the surface and open their leaves to the sun.

Maybe you’re making art and it’s more fierce and tender then you imagined, or maybe you’re not, because who can make art at a time like this.

Maybe you’re noticing things need your attention and some of those things are huge like soul work, and some are mundane like cleaning the bathroom for example, and you’re taking naps on the grass instead and imagining a stream flowing over you and you’re too exhausted for epiphanies anyway.

Maybe your partner is taking chances that scare you. Maybe they don’t think you’re taking enough chances, and maybe you respond, But what if the next thing you touch kills you?

Maybe there are too many reminders that you’re mortal, or someone is dying not in your arms or you’re standing alone outside, looking in the window at your mother, the frightened blinks of her eyes, or the nurse is holding the phone to your sister’s ear because she’s on a ventilator but still you know she is listening because of the way she breathes.

Maybe you’re not alone in your feelings and maybe you’re holding space for someone, or someone is holding space for you, and maybe the most important things for those of us still here are subversive gestures of tenderness and courage and daring to touch the light.