Poetry and Writes

Quarantine (WRITE)

*A write written without a timer and without any prompts.*

You walk to school alone each day, to spend fifty minutes enclosed by brick and mortar. Old faces surround you, as you sit on the edge of your chair, searching the orchestra for your friends from last year. Many have dropped out, probably to do art and PE. You're sitting by Michelle, a girl with braces and light blonde hair. She talks to you in her dusky voice, and your leg, the right one, begins to shake. You like this girl, she's a good acquaintance, and her laugh usually makes you smile.

But now, now you're only a faint replier in the conversation. Your ears tell you to laugh along with her--she just said something funny, you think--so you do, a whispery thing your nose exhales. But your eyes, your eyes dart away from hers and you try to make it casual. After all, most students your age don't worship eye contact like your teachers do.

She asks you about your summer. Your ears put your lips on auto-pilot.

You tell her it was good, relaxing. You went to Neskowin, Oregon. You binged Lost--had Michelle heard of it? No, she hadn't. Typical, your brain scoffs. And also, what a conversation fungus.

You continue blathering about your "crazy" brother, and you overexaggerate drama during backpacking trips and theater camps. You ask her about her summer. Then the orchestra teacher steps to the front of the whiteboard. Gradually the room hushes.

Michelle closes her mouth and gives you a subtle shrug.

Now the room is silent and your eyes fully examine the room. You aren't looking for your friends anymore. You guess you never had been before. Your pupils whirl in their sockets like you've caught a virus, and it makes you restless. You don't even know why you have to scan the room, what your fevered eyes are protecting you from. Your brain feeds them made-up premonitions. You hope the students around you don't notice your virus eyes. You don't want to be quarantined.

But isn't that what you already are? Quarantined away inside your own raving head?

Then class comes to an end. You sling your violin case over your back, pick up your book and water bottle--which you must always have with you--and head through the halls. Your dancing eyes scream CLAUSTROPHOBIA CLAUSTROPHOBIA and you hunch down, scrambling past your peers. Finally you reach the attendance office and sign out in a red binder. With eager eyes and reluctant feet you walk out of the door.

The fresh September air embraces you. Turning maples let go of their quivering leaves. The gentle sun beats down on the dead grass of summer, pains which fall has not yet quenched.

And your eyes, those sick, fickle eyes, glance back at the door to your school. And you think maybe you should go back in, see your friends, listen to Michelle talk about her summer.

But you have the rest of your classes at home. You remind yourself that this mixture of schooling is beneficial--it will keep you from being overwhelmed by the sensation of being rooted to one place.

But your virus is the very thing that made you this way, and now you've been quarantined to two places--your school and your home.

But isn't this, isn't this what you wanted? Was it the virus? Or was it your naive desire to feel safe? Safe, safe, such a relative term.

You curse your reeling thoughts, thoughts that didn't have time to connect before new nonsensical waves crashed in, loud and discordant and worrisome.

And you realize. The virus. The virus, it's everywhere.

You begin your dizzy walk home.