Page 88 - COVID Consortium Journal - An Edited Collection of Student Art and Writing

biggest problem. These hopes crumble and shred by the day. Possibilities
become positives and maybe become threats.

Less and less people wander through the streets and sloshing silence
blares endlessly, leaving plenty of room for worry to gallivant through my
mind. Going into a grocery store becomes essential and yet a death sentence,
even just from fear.

Getting from block from block becomes an undoable task with social dis-
tancing. Things stay the same at what we wonder is the peak. We wonder about
everything. Everything is the cause of fear. This present moment is somehow
my fear. I would have never seen this. Even with fear pulling me ahead.

Parks fill with cops who stand blank faced trying to keep people separat-
ed yet giving up and cracking a smile.

Angrily people inspect food in stores, looking for the invisible enemy
as the president called it. The stress is unthinkable. You have no idea what is
going to happen, but there is no way to stop anything.

I watch as people snicker and throw themselves six feet away from oth-
ers. Frantically, the numbers triple in NYC. Looking at the latest news, you pray
that you haven’t passed or even breathed near a victim.
As allergies wade in, the questions roar even louder, again adding more
water to the pool of uncertainty, which is enough percent worry to make me
spill. I worry and worry and worry. It is no help at all. I don’t worry about death.
I worry about life. I worry about the future and the past. My blessings, and my
mind just runs. It runs so far I can’t catch it with the fear that holds me in place.
This world is real. And life is real. I am here, but not really. “Be here.” I still
can’t. I need to. Sometimes happiness, pure happiness, takes a wrong turn, and
I end up on an exhibition to the farthest place from Earth. I rummage through
thoughts, about how I am here. That I am me. That all of this is REAL. I am not
dreaming. Dreaming is real, and how could it be that I can go somewhere in my
mind when I dream. If this planet is real, and science is real, and life is real, and
everything is really truly here, then how can magic not be real? How can death
end up a black eternity where poof, one day you’re gone? You can’t think. You
can’t see. You can’t hear. You don’t have anything and you don’t exist.

Then I come back to Earth. Where there is this virus. This powerful,
powerful, virus. And I can’t move. I sit and wait. I can’t fight anymore. It is over,

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