20 pounds gained

Confidence lost

In myself

And so many around me;

Said goodbye to a job I despised

For the safety of home

And the sake of my sanity;

Love comes and goes

When loneliness overpowers

Willpower.

I haven’t had a haircut

Since my DIY COVID-19 buzz cut

That’s still growing out

And as much as I’d like one

The idea of a stranger breathing

Directly over me

Mask or not

Makes my skin crawl.

Today I applied

For a remote position

Doing data entry for an online cemetery company

Cataloguing tombstones and plot numbers

Based on scanned handwritten records

(I assume)

For half of my last pay rate.

Maybe I’m morbid

But

I think it could be interesting…

Data entry

Of the dead.

The woman in this photo

Seems a stranger

So confident and strong.

I wish I could summon her back now

But that high wave has crashed

And I think the next one

Will look very different

Than they ever have before.

For now I’ll trudge along

In my paint-stained jeans

That barely fit

Doing my best to keep my babies safe

Relying on Zoom

For some kind of

Connection.

I stuck a reluctant toe

Into the murky waters

Of online dating

For approximately 12 hours

Before deleting it all;

The idea of sharing these scraps of heart

Sounds disastrous

Sounds too hard

Can wait.

There are so many books to read

There are so many books to write

There are photographs to take

There is so very much to do

There aren’t enough words to find

There’s a new version of myself

To expose to the light.