In conversation with .. 4!

On March 20th, the US-Mexican border,
the most heavily trafficked land port
of entry, was closed for “non-essential”
workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Unable to quarantine in the same household,
families, friends, and lovers have
since been separated until further notice
May 13th, 2020
Neville,
I no longer know how to translate this pain.
It’s been nearly fifty-four days since we
shared the same bed, since we held each
other in a warm embrace and whispered
eternal love, a declaration only audible to
the texture and folds of our skin. The last
time we showered together, there was music
playing in the background and warm
water pouring down my back and shoulders.
I couldn’t hear the music nor feel the
water, but I could wrap my arms around
your lower waist to bring you closer to
me. To touch you, to taste you, to bathe
you in salt, that was called living. You see,
what the way your body moves and talks
and questions mine has taught me is that
there is so much beauty to be found in the
mundane. Maybe it’s silly to say it out loud.
Maybe a declaration of love so pure might
seem obsessive, overdone at times, empty
and lacking given how many other lovers
have said the same words before in vain.
But it doesn’t matter, because this letter is
for you, just for you.
We have nothing left but the heavy drag of
the light shifting across the room in sharp
angles, bringing with it occasional warmth.
Somedays, it doesn’t even show up, it sits
behind a bed of clouds, and so we shut the
blinds, maybe light a candle. We pretend
it’s the sun or we sit in the dark and feel
our limbs as they harden with time. Legs,
shoulders, neck, spine. I stretch in bed
whenever I remember to. I pick up a pen,
press it across tomorrow and the day after,
I stop at the 30th, and jot down a question
mark. I scribble over it and remind myself
that hoping for the best has done nothing
but prove to be the quickest route to disappointment.
The line between optimism
and foolishness shaves itself thinner every
day I don’t leave the house.
13