How to Come Out of Lockdown

1

Someone will need to forgive me for being

who I am, for sneaking back to my blue chair

by the window, where for the last three hundred and seventy days

I have learned that to be alone is what is good for me. I am pretending

as if I really belong with those who want to return to this world

with open arms, even though it has done to us

what it has done. I wish I could love like that,

instead of wanting to turn my back on it all,

as if life in the world were a marriage

assumed too young and necessarily left behind.

Try as I might I will never become

one of the world’s faithful ones.

My naked face and your naked face,

maskless. A cold March dawn,

harsh sunlight, impersonal and honest,

mindless like the light from a surgeon’s lamp

worn on the forehead as you peer down

into the wound. Nothing in this new life

is asked of me except to remember how small I am.