from a distance

we’ve been told to stay at home, to stay in place, to stand six feet away, to be alone now. i am alone now, there are times when all of us are alone. people all around us counting the bones in their hands, counting their steps as they shuffle up the stairs, up to their old paint apartments, their whole day in two reusable shopping bags, sitting in the same sallow chair of four chairs, reading the box of a microwave dinner in the dark and sleeping with the t.v. on. it is sometimes lonelier in a city, los angeles spread out to the edges of the orange groves like it does, car part stores and strip malls now, nail salons and thai food takeout, vietnamese and lined up curries, everything where there were trees once, only asphalt and sprayed on stucco on the walls, the memories of a thousand chumash indians under a ‘jack in the box’ on ventura.

everyone is sometimes “i”, sometimes “us”, sometimes “them”, everyone alone and unknowingly part of some crowd. it’s hard to know how things get started and as sure as the end of things are, we don’t want to look. it’s hard to know what people think and what they think of us, what and who we are to a life that rushes by us, even in the afternoon traffic. me, i’m the sum of my hands, i suppose, fingers and toes, two thumbs that make twenty, what adds up to one. it’s hard to see ourselves as small as we are, you can’t even see a mountain all at once. the times says satellite images show the air is cleaner with the lack of cars on the road, that you can see clear to catalina and the san juan islands, that we can breathe easy, just not near anyone, and to wash our hands and sing happy birthday while we do, all of us singing to ourselves in a bane vanity mirror somewhere and thinking of who’s name to use.

so what have i learned so far in this time of social distancing, that i wasn’t alone after all… or that i was. i’ve spent a life on my own, an only child, always talking to myself, what the old man called my “imaginary friend”, what he would tell the neighbors, but i knew it was just me. me reading cereal boxes out loud with my mouth full and channel 5 on the t.v., announcing my little kid everydays like the big game, playing basketball by myself or catch against the garage door with a superball, baseballs didn’t bounce. and now i’m a man, an adult married man, according to the county, with a dependent, a daughter, but it’s just me at the other end of my arm. i tell myself stories still in my head, in the car, in a world i’ve hollowed out for myself, things i’ve said or she said, dog eared ideas that won’t ever rhyme. being alone is what i’ve always done, what i hate, and what i do best, what the county doesn’t know.