Coronavirus poem 8: This Is the Darkest Timeline

One that started with a roll of the dice,
an election gone awry, a time of fire and flood.
When we started to panic at every pandemic,
went into quarantine playing quarters.
We’ve all become the evil versions of ourselves
just trying to get back to the prime timeline,
the one where everything went right,
when our memories weren’t clouded by calamity.
That butterfly that flapped its wings,
the animal virus gone rogue. We couldn’t buy
butter or bullets. We waited with bated breath
underground. When we emerge anew
it will be with new eyes, our currency
changed from cash to cashews and cheese
sandwiches. You can’t remember the taste
of food without tin. You can’t remember
how to kiss. Your sense of time scrambled.
You learned to throw a knife and gut fish.
The darkest timeline has taken us
the way of apocalypse, earthquake,
supervolcanos, and tidal waves.
We can’t take any more disaster.
We’ve buried too many bodies
and sheltered in place too long to forget.
When we started this journey it was
“nothing left to lose,” now we’re too tired
to remember how fresh fruit used to smell,
the pale pink of cherry blossoms,
the days before the coyotes took over our streets.