So many, too many students had COVID two weeks ago. My parents were supposed to come for a visit, and midterms were on the horizon - so I decided to go ahead and get covid - to get it over with. I’ve been around a dozen people who later that day tested positive, but somehow I’ve never come down with it myself.

Peter caught it and was isolated in his suite (two of his suitemates had it). I went to see him, surreptitiously hoping he’d pass it on, but Lisa (the traitor) texted him and he Lysoled his entire suite and wouldn’t let me in - saying exposing me went against his “moral code.” rolling eyes

Now midterm season is on us and a lot of people I know are in crisis. That happens a lot in test times. This place is so cutthroat and competitive. You can get so deep in your own head that it becomes a ***** fish bowl of anxiety. The delightful cocktail of pandemic, WWIII and midterm stress gel, in some minds, to form a sweet, unhinging mix.

My major tests are over (good for me, yay for me!) but I’m not parking my study playlist just yet. I have a couple of papers due. While those don’t stress me like tests, they’ll keep me busy, like everyone else - there’s always a feeling of being behind it and frantically busy here.

We were trying to plan an actual, REAL spring break - that didn’t involve 11 hour layovers and 5 hour bus rides. Something NOT held in a parent’s apartment - someplace adult and private.

Then my Grandmère offered us an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris, saying I could bring three friends and stay at the Hotel de Crillon. A week in Paris with Lisa, Leong and Anna sounds delicious - of course, I told them how positively uncouth it would be to refuse -  we’ll see.

We’re in the common room, Lisa and I. It’s Friday afternoon, about 2 - It’s partly-sunny and 45°f. outside. We’ve claimed the two squares of temporary rectangular sunlight like the Spanish conquistadors of old once claimed everything.

I’m just drowsing, I had a test this morning, I got up at 3:30am to study for it and although I’m confident I did ok, I find myself rehashing it when I close my eyes. So I’m determinedly not closing my eyes - much. Lisa has a book open and she’s working on a chemistry problem set (called a pset) assigned as homework.

Looking out and up, there’s only one, lonely, cumulonimbus cloud in the sky. It's there, as if placed - a piece of art - the rest of the sky remaining defiantly blank. At first glance, it resembled a man, hanging by his neck, blowing in the wind under a giant mushroom gallows - but he soon detached and floated away like a tattered kite.

Lisa starts asking a question, without looking up from her book. “Ok, so when hydrogen acts as a metal instead of a nonmetal..”

“Please don’t make me think,” I whisper in a tired monotone, “I’m unprepared.”

“Ugh.” Lisa, grunted. She absorbed her disappointment quietly, without taking offense.

We’re like two disparate species coexisting in the same landscape: the chemistry-tested and the soon-to-be-tested - neither diminished the other but we’re separate.

Leong and Anna come in together, breaking off to their rooms to shed bookbags and coats but soon they’re filling the room with restless energy. “Has anyone heard from Sophy?” Leong asks.

Sophy failed a rapid test yesterday morning and was hewn from the population like a cancer on the student body - and swooped off to isolation housing. “Yeah, I took her some stuff this morning,” I report, “She seems ok.”

People are dropping to covid like flies. None of us are invincible, we roommates watch each other - as if any one of us could go full-on-zombie at any moment - not unlike I imagine dinner at the Trumps these days - everyone looking around, nonchalantly, wondering who’ll flip first - but here, if you cough, you’ll start a panic.

Everyone’s getting covid. It’s become serious.
And pretty much everyone here is triple vaxxed.
1 in 17 at Yale have it now. One of my roommates got it.
I’m hoping I get it - if I get it - before finals.
‘cause I doubt Yale professors would give extensions.
“You’re dying? Did you not read the syllabus? NO extensions”

“What were you like as a kid?“ He asked.
Umm, “naïve..,” “boyish.. obsessive.” I answered, thoughtfully.
And how would you describe yourself now? He follows-up.
Umm, “less naïve..” “boyish.. obsessive.,” we laughed.

2006: Taylor Swift releases her first album. I was three years old.
I grew up with her - every breakup, every turns-out-gay boyfriend.
She’s brilliant - don’t get me wrong - no doubt in the universe,
but she’s not the underdog any more - not an outsider - she’s FAB rich, royalty, no, better than royalty. And she has the Taylor army.
Why is she always threatening physical violence?
Taylor is candid, she’s gay and straight, she’s republican, rageful, ****** and complex and I want to believe she actually ran someone down aka a Gatsby
She’s the Alexander Pope of our generation.
I’m just questioning the Taylor Swift breakup-industrial-complex.

Is Pete Davidson hot? I can’t decide.
He looks sort of gangly and awkward.
He’s dating Kim Kardashian.
I mean it’s not like Kanye is hot.
She’s obviously not looking for THAT.

To know or not to know that is the question. I mean; I already know, I took it once. Yet that once was back before the continuous onset of diarrhea (which could have been caused by the accidental switch up of my stir fry or the unending pastries I filled myself with), before the sniffles and the sneezes (caused by the cold wearing a too thin jacket to the gym), before the exhaustion (wack sleep schedule). I knew before all of that. And even then, that know was a rapid test (but still a test) which could’ve been wrong. So, should I? Should I take it again? Or should I go about my day, and attend dance practice with none the wiser?

…still there? Hey, where’s she gone?

Oh, she’s at dance practice.

We’re busy all day long with studying and chapter summaries,
we’re stuck in quarantine. Luckily, I like my roommate's company.

We know that we have work to do as prep for upcoming classes,
but we know that it takes more than work to make young lasses happy.

So I talked my roomies into getting, a steak-n-cheese delivery,
instead of working fact-sheets, for our next term chemistry.

Dueling playlists cave-rave from the echos in our suites,
we’re having all the fun we can on opening quarantine week.

Some guys try for invites, like we’re throwing a private wingding,
but those texts go unanswered ‘cause we’re genuinely quarantining.

With the COVID blues proscribed - get that frown right off your face miss,
our studies are on schedule - and it’s time for some serious play *****!

These closed eyes;
in all these unfamiliar times as it seems.
Closed doors, and shut curtains
over these once outside dreams.

Even when I'm out;
these fears have my mind in quarantine.

Sneeze!

Someone did so in front of me.
Without their bent elbow;
I was quickly thinking about the old ones
back home, of my family.

Never thinking I could lose count
of all those loved ones I've lost.
Not all through a pandemic,
but because of it;
a natural death hurts a lot.

Seems I've used up all the tears;
to cry out for another loss.

Sniff!

Only afterwards, you realize you didn't
spend time with them for that long.
All when their already gone,
but you still sing the memories like
a nostalgic song.

Cough!

Clearing my throat;
the heaviest heart I had to swallow.
So light of how lightly we take today.
You may not wake up to the bright day
of another tomorrow.

The beauty of life can easily
fade to whither like a flower.

How long do we really have;
counting your life on two open hands?
Praying for the Lord's eternal life's piece,
and it feels like he won't meet those demands.
You may feel your ideas starting to
hate the ways of his plans.

Lord I don't understand!

I just write down the questions;
in a list, on a scroll,
and bury the paper deep inside my soul.
The opening question being,
"was it you or the devil, sometimes in control"

Only in the heavens...will I know.

This sickness has
derailed me.
I've scaled back on
the things that
matter most.
Life has become
askew.
I'm tangled up in
blue and red lines,
back against the
fence.
I'm frozen and febrile.
Insecticide burns on
my spirit.
Pesticide in my lungs.
I'm sick of all
these chemicals.
They are in my dreams,
and in my bones.
Maybe, she is the infection...
Never mind, it's just Covid 19.

the air outside is still
as though the world
is a living room
and the trees furniture
shouts arousing fear
sound close at hand
aggressive threatening
as though directed at me
a tiny spider crawls
up the front of my shirt
one of those that makes
a web of your head
and itches all day
a car more noise than power
echoes it's exhaust sound
round the terraced houses
then
all becomes quiet
as though waves have
mellowed into a millpond
a bird sings
the most haunting beautiful
refrain,  lonely chanteuse
filling the airwaves
finally I sleep again

The air is magic
In the same way a human nervous system is divinely inspired by tree roots

As tree roots seek other tree roots to bind to, sharing nutrients and information underground in secret tongues lost to time (but not to trees),
So too does the nervous system talk to our various insides,
electricity and fat and water and blood,
mysterious even to us as we haphazardly propel ourselves through space,
a mess of actions and reactions.

Magic

In the same way that time exists only because death exists
And death exists both because of and in spite of time.

And I am alive.

(If you ever doubt yourself, remember the incredible odds you overcame just to become).

Months maybe, a year?
We were unmasked in your home or mine,
Or on a walk
Or texting our words into knitted ropes that became our strength and our life line
And you said
“I never realized how connected we all are. That every moment spent with others, I am breathing their breath. We’re sharing breath, all of us, all the time.”

Oh.
Oh. Yes.
Lashes of breath like lizard tongues
Forked and solid and hot
Plunging and coiling;
Ariel losing her song.

(I carry this with me still, like I carry the threat of the possibility of blood drying in the veins, crystallizing there.)

A sharing of totems, airborne on the exhale, between the vastness of humanity.
Maybe it’s a
Heart,
feather,
child,
guitar string,
equation,
pet,
sense memory

- a bit of mustard,
a crumb of cheese -

a shame,
a secret,
an illness,
a loss,
a hope,
a flame,
a diary entry,

a passage in a story that is so written on your DNA that your ancestors will possess its truth and sacredness,

Not ******, but nakedness.

The unknowable intricacies that terraform the gallery walls of every life ever lived,
Each of us a cavern sprawling brimming with a trail mix of escaped fragments of other souls, nestled among our own wreckage and music and roots of trees.

This invisible connection to each other,
so wrought now, warped and vivid
against the sky.  
Drawing breath as drawing sword,
building blocks as barriers built,  
We are withdrawing from each other in our sick rooms,
dosed on breath from birth,
suddenly forced into thickened singularity for an easier swallow, weighted heavy on the chest.
Oh I know, it’s the X-ray blanket at the dentist when you were a kid
It’s Ian’s sweaty shaking hand during that first detox, 20 bars deep, wanting to tell him that I ******* told you so, I TOLD you. Knowing that no one’s voice would ever be louder than his own.

You look at me,
And I’m losing you.
I see it like bitterness on your lips
But I don’t mind.
You’re right, I’m exhausted too.
I wish I was better at being frank.
How, though, to make sense of this new world if not to drag the old world into it?
How to point and name and say “this is”
When all you know is what it is not?

None but he who calls me, me,
thinks of me
as doer of

the deeds we see were done, or
must have been done,
ere I was error there of, as

beauties, if such do yet make
plans for chances I can take
as hope, sent deep to meet me,

as has been done, hoped over
plans, in me, object I point
at you. See, we are they who do

say you see the banner wave,
o'er the legendary home, aye,
of free and brave, learn-

ed and led by the learned away,
to find the me who started
thinking things we say are prayer,

this, nada mas, this we have
as we think, we have, this we,
I, me and you. Please be real. Amen.

The out of body designation,
after life, after ever once begun,
rounds the bend in time to find you.

That is mine, you said to he-
he who calls me, me, he may be
too dense to pass through, solid state.

Activated Intelligence,
see the odds, gads, scads of
notta chances remain to test,

may good enough to try, get by,
as among the best, for umph,
at the last wish in any set of three

kinds of minds full of found
ways this could occur or happen
to seem felt right, enough for now.

- the binge, a novel passtime,
- focus, intent, on hero stories fit
- slicker than snot to viral ideas…

We sneeze, sometimes in threes,
all the breathers who think in me terms,
studies show we mostly sneeze in threes;
------------------------
we get vaccines in threes, and we live on
Between April 26 and July 10, 1954,
volunteers distributed Salk's series of three polio shots….

From <https://www.google.com/search?q=first+polio+vaccine+roll+out&oq=first+polio+vaccine+roll+out&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i22i29i30.9668j1j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8>