Before: Saturday

​Before I would have been up early, fed the dogs, gone off to the Farmer’s Market in the city next to our village. My mood would lift seeing the French bakery tent, the Tamales steaming, Fuji Apple farmer, the biodynamic farmer with vegetables fit for an Art Museum (the only ones with Mulberries), the fisherwoman who scoops ice into a bag of fresh Halibut and offers a sample of ceviche, the up-the-coast Farmers who have carrots sweeter than candy and lettuce shaped like fanned out roses. Saturday morning was a marvel.

I cannot touch my face anymore and so it itches in places that I know it never has before. I spend hours trying to feel calm, breathe, invite self-compassion. Without notice I speed up only to not follow through on the many tasks that seemed momentarily essential.

I now have the prepared and pickled hands of that mummy I was taken with at the British museum. I have the diet of whatever. The dread of one step away from here.

Others are not welcome. Loved ones are virtual.

It is suddenly late afternoon again and I stare at bottle brush trees out the rectangular window above my desk. I am waiting for them to bloom.