The Year of Living Dangerously

 It began quickly and then it never ended

This feeling of the loss of equilibrium

This belief that every door handle was bathed in danger

That the communal garbage room was not to be trusted

That the grocery store was housing not only fruits and vegetables but the possibility of death

Every sentence beginning with a question mark

Every person on the street greeted with suspicion

Every day an invitation to disaster

Each package marked "open with concern"

Our hands, our mouth, our eyes now enemies

Each sneeze a statement, each cough an exclamation mark, each fever a scream

The calendar marking our survival

We sanitized ourselves, removing everything, stripped naked of our intimacies, hibernating in our worry

Along the way we lost so much that at times we wondered if anything was left

Life interrupted almost beyond recognition

But now we stand on the precipice 

Vaccinated against our worst fears

Able to imagine once again

The playground swings no longer walled off in yellow tape like a crime scene

The shuttered doors now peaking open

The faces long covered in doubt now filled with hope 

Our path no longer strewn with explosives

Our dreams no longer off limits

Our endless year of living dangerously now ending

Not yet but soon, maybe tomorrow

For the longest time there was no tomorrow

For the longest time it was the longest time

For the longest time, time stopped

But now it is a new dawn