we all came home and locked the door,
ready, we felt, to wait
out this threat that swept
country to country to state
to state, and
we had toilet paper, coffee, and pasta,
enough dish soap, enough sugar, and
we looked at one another,
then went to different rooms
to wait.
And we had Disney+ and Netflix,
we had YouTube recipes from celebrities’ kitchens,
concerts broadcast from condominium bathrooms, tributes
to Ellis Marsalis, Bill Withers, prayers for John Prine,
the news anchors in their own basements,
live, telling us
how many people died overnight
while we waited,
while we talked about restaurants,
about canceled events, movie theaters, our friends, our offices,
we started to wonder
was that enough toilet paper after all?
Does anybody know how long
it’s been?
And we broke out
the Monopoly board, read poetry
books, started pasta craft projects,
looked out the windows
less and less,
stopped turning the TV on for the president,
the governor, the news, we wonder
will someone find us
someday as the ghosts
of who we locked in here, souls
that tired of waiting,
though kept on waiting,
our bodies lighter,
our spirits feverish,
bright, impossible
to recognize?
