Hazy

 I feel like I looked away and 5 years flew by.  Wasn't I just in Barcelona with my friend, Alicia?

I lived in a cute house next to a forest known for mountain lions and homeless people.  The house had a dog door and a dishwasher.  The forest had pine needles and sky.  I went for walks with Lori and drinks with Sandra.  I lifted heavy weights with Gail and carried the world, they said.

Was it a dream that I slipped away?

Did I step through some sort of portal?

I recall working in a small office in a large building in a mid-sized Hoosier city known for not much outside of the local university having a great football team.  It was humid there and the houses were tiny and quite old, which adds character, they said. When the sun shines there, the whole world is impossibly green.  When the moon glows there, tiny lights skirt above the grass and blink away. 

My friend, Hope, died.  That memory is oddly sharp in the midst of this haze.  I do not forget that.

I remember every moment of that phone call -how my head was tilted against the headboard, how the phone felt smooth and hot, how the sheets wrapped around my toes felt rough and cold, how Adrianne's voice seemed tinny and far away and so so tired, how the midnight snow made the world all blue and strange.  How I should have been there when it happened.  I do not forget that.

I remember working in a tiny office under stairs and bursting into a grand hall with bones so old they had turned to stone before humans had even stood upright. The happy laughter of children echoed against the silent marble and I walked toward a grand expanse of water. There were afternoon teas and happy hours and long lunches and Halloween.

I remember looking out this same window for one year, observing snow, wind, cold, blazing mornings, sirens, smashing glass and gunfire, fog and flashing lights, and never feeling any of it.

I remember being told that there is a Vaccine and Soon and it felt like part of me had just accepted that my life will always be looking through that window but that is Not True and now I do not know what comes next.

But I hope the haze lifts soon.