The City Announces Quarantine
In a game of Magic the Gathering,
Armageddon lay between all of us
face-up on the table, and I declared we
needed to slow down; it was the Ides
of March, and every land we drew our
power from was removed from play. The world
fell and we rewrote rules so that we would still
convene, while busy highways became open
avenues of asphalt; we held hands and kissed
each others’ faces when all else disappeared
like loaves of bread from grocery shelves,
stolen away for what’s unknown. We met
with a shuffling of sneakered feet in dark halls.
Was it cheating to celebrate birthdays
in this age, to smile and laugh with friends
in our arms and between our legs; to eat
cake when so many had a hunger
for what we had? We sang loudly off-key
and it sounded lovely, like the word secret.
Mask 4 Mask
We held our breath,
walking past others in the narrow
grocery store aisles;
our bandanas hid curled lips
and our eyes fixed ahead.
We were afraid to touch
the food we were to take
home and eat, but we touched
regardless. The line between
want and need spilled
somewhere in aisle 13,
and we grabbed bags of snacks
for our quarantine;
Doritos, Oreos, and ice cream
suddenly seemed essential
when meats, bread and tissue
paper went missing for the first
time I could remember.
An elderly man with no mask jolted
upright as we passed, and lifted
his arms as if he were being robbed;
none of us knew what would be
taken, or when we could breathe
easy again, but the joke
was welcome all the same.