virus

sick in bed with covid for the first time, i've finally joined the millions who've been rolled over by this virus. being ill awakens the body, forces repose. acutely aware of each muscle's ache, each nerve's complaint, there is a distancing from the world. the body is everything. it is, in fact, how the world is. what i see from the window is the shockingly blue sky--how is it so?--and also the aluminum roof with its vents and chimneys. for a moment i glimpse something profound in this contrast, but it slips away. 

being a writer always had an air of respectability around it. why? perhaps because it is done at a desk. you could look like a banker, or a lawyer, sitting there with your spectacles and writing instruments. unlike a painter, a dancer, a rock star, who all wear their art on their body. or their body inhabits their art. maybe i believed i could hide there:  writer, not artist. sitting at a desk, believing that none of this pain, none of this difference, none of this outrage would have to be known to the world. or, at least, could be kept off of my body. 

but the work does not take kindly to this act of artifice. the work wants total devotion. insides matching outsides. words on the page more than anything long to be true.