Dear X,
In the book I’ve been writing for years,
it is summer and the schools are about to get out
and you just went to a huge party
where they passed around food
and people ate it with their fingers
and hugged each other and tasted
each other’s wine. You live in a world
that no longer exists, and every day
I try to reconcile it—how easily you
go to the store, no mask, no gloves,
no fear you’ll contract a virus you might
pass on to your elderly mother.
Every day, your life, which once mirrored my life,
seems increasingly impossible.
Every day, your life, which was once my life,
feels increasingly like fiction.
Every day, I try to hold these two worlds—
the one in which you get on a plane
and the one in which I put on rubber gloves
to go to the post office box.
I’ve never once written about how you wash
your hands for fear that someone you love
will die. I’ve never once written how you
check CNN every twenty minutes
to see how the world has changed.
I almost remember what it was like
to hug my friends with no worry
of harming them, to go to a restaurant,
to plan for a day past tomorrow.
