Transfixed to a Curve

When
will we
begin to truly see.
We watch screens tinged with
red circles and ascendant, ski-slope curves.
We start to feel that desperate need to escape all that
is happening around us. We seek what we know or are familiar
with, as ways of re-assuring us that we’re just in something temporary.
It’s like we must watch a mythical global-games commentary, truly transfixed
to see if our curve has peaked and if there is a place where this force of nature
prevails. Where our capacity for resilience and coping might just emerge as we
embrace practices of cleansing hands, wearing certain clothes, covering our
faces, socially distancing, herding, proximity – a vocabulary that was
there before. Now, it means new things. Some of us live
in an illusion that things will return to normal.
We’re redefining that word. What we once
expected no longer happens.
The newly typical
is emerging,
Slowly.