Alone On Palm Sunday

Alone On Palm Sunday

I gazed outside my square windows, socially distant from reality,

Protective glass dusted with greenish pollen in front of me,

I tried not to sneeze; I blinked my eyelids,

It scared me to sneeze, I sneezed,

But I was alone, no harm, no foul,

My mind whispered it was just common allergies,

It was pointless to worry; I thought rationally,

But my runny nose scared me as I remembered not to touch my face, I wished I had bought another box of facial tissue, but they had been swept from the grocery store shelves,

I wondered what surfaces my fingers had touched, so I washed my hands,

And I wondered what could be dormant inside my cells?

So I turned off the television, listening to my breathing as I again, washed my hands,

The silence broken by a house wren chirping toward me from the outside world, It dangled from a fragile tree limb, curiously inspecting me,

“Why aren’t you outside playing with me?” The dark bird’s eyes expressed,

“Where have all the humans gone? It’s a perfect day here in the St. Petersburg subtropics.”

I shrugged as it flew away, it was ignorant to our global pandemic play,

I gazed outside my windows,

Brown squirrels scratched up gnarled tree trunks, They climbed higher, leaping from bouncy green-limb to green-limb,

They appeared fearless of an invisible specter the televisions talking-heads had informed me were microscopic respiratory droplets lurking out there,

The infectious disease weather reporter informing me that an invisible, deadly blizzard was snowing pestilence across the fragile lands,

I gazed outside my windows,

Left or right I searched the city streets that were a paranoid quiet and bare,

And then, a masked human walked with purpose, alone, carrying back provisions inside reusable cotton bags,

Another masked human avoided the other masked human, creating a wide circumference along their shared concrete path,

I suspected each stricken with an undefinable collective fear,

And as I watched, the dusty streets and the modern buildings witnessed nothing, I sneezed, I touched my runny nose, and again, I washed my hands,

A lone, slender street lamp waited for darkness for its appointed time to return to work,

I listened to the silence inside my mind,

And I wondered if I existed within an induced coma, simply clicking off quarantine time, I assumed it was my role to accept the seconds mortal click-clock, click-clock, click-clock,

I looked outside my windows, searching for a reason,

I starred upward into a pure blue sky painted across with delicate white clouds,

I prayed for my giant snow globes protection, as I virtually shared in a sacrificial ritual,

I accepted my isolated mission, as another Groundhog Day awaited,

And I realized, sometimes a dream is not a dream.

NS