(Student Submission)
Theme: Ourselves in the World
Artist Statement:
I think most people found that the quarantine made them value social interaction more; made them crave socialization. For me, it was the opposite: I have settled very comfortably in an introverted life, to the point that I’m starting to feel like I’m melding with my home. That realization has me constantly torn between wanting to stay inside forever and wanting to run before I merge with the walls.
Days under the virus
Days under the virus have their own kind of flavor.
I’m working from home to make money I can’t see
to fund a future that soon may not exist.
I stay up for hours every night, in the dark
thinking of all the ways the world might end.
People say make sure to take walks
get enough sleep, Skype enough friends,
or you’ll start to merge with your walls
you’ll start to hear the house breathe.
Everything starts to smell like my bed:
my cat, my clothes, my boyfriend’s arms.
We start to become furniture ourselves.
In the night, my room starts to whisper to me,
asks me if this is the life that I want.
This isn’t what anyone wants, I say.
Let’s be thankful that we’re alive.
I spend eight hours on Zoom and two in the shower,
Cleaning the silence out of my ears.
The house is empty, the rhythm is set
Its soft breaths keep me from staying awake.
I take a walk so I can smell again,
walk by the door to some stranger’s workshop.
The sound of his radio floats out from inside,
a million foreign scents of another life
just as cooped-up as mine.
My mask is scrunched up in my hand,
campus sidewalks punctuated with abandoned furniture.
I pick through their belongings like a scavenger
and start to like the thought of a fiercely overgrown world
swallowing up what we all left behind,
foliage claiming the space for its own.
It looks like it’s about to rain
I think of walking home soaked in water from the sky
Of walking somewhere far, becoming something else
of letting my empty house die.