Member-only story
Ninety One (Eighty Eight)
There are ninety one days from
the start of the year until
this moment
first of april
no joke
even though that ninety one days
feels like ninety one years
or ninety one lifetimes
ask me how I know and I’ll
tell you that I called my grandmother
eighty-eight in isolation
and twenty twenty is the sum of
every summer sun she’s sat under
and every morning light she’s risen to
and every starry sky she’s slept beneath
for every year of her long stretching life
so you are not wrong when you feel stretched thin
worn out
hands dry and cracking from so much staying home
and doing nothing
trying to be clean
you are not wrong when you feel strung out
cracking
voice soft and shaking from so much immediate silence
and not speaking
trying to be sane
through ever widening distance
under your own roof
can you imagine that loneliness is lonelier
than aloneness even in this
ninety one days of twenty twenty
finds me pushing straight pins through
hospital approved fabric to make
not good enough but not as bad as nothing masks
for the best men and women we send into this fight
