Before the pandemic, we rarely paid attention to this. Now, we watch it over and over, enjoying the moment.

I started to feel naïve to think that I could ever take this pandemic "by the horns" and believe that I could thrive amidst the tragedy and chaos.

I was with my dad when he bought these. He wanted a pair of red shoes for playing pickleball. Never one for flash and yet he wanted a sense of savior faire.

She is alone. Her gait is brisk and light-footed, almost floating and soaring above the ground. Her tattered fur is dusty tan and creamy vanilla.

Pain, like love, can be an intense and long-lasting relationship. Pain, unlike love, is not something we wake up hoping for.

My prayer is that we will come out of this as fully-healed people who have known loss and caught our breath …

We were essentially trapped in our own house, not only by the pandemic, but by the ice as well.

I stop, mesmerized. The curb in front of the mill house has been lined with old bottles and jars. Some whole, some broken. Each claims a spot, catching the morning sun.

Testing took forever, and a positive result came back on January 6th– just in time to watch the Capital get over-run.

While he tends to rush and take off with other riders, I, somehow, manage to calm him, and he goes over the jumps smoothly.

I’ve overheard enough of his screaming matches with my brother to know how he reacts to anything that taints his ideal picture of how Black men should be.

Jon offered to check one more area for trees. Shortly after, he called me on FaceTime to show me what he had found, but the reception was so poor it was just a green blur.

Affecting us one and all
waiting to get
that dreaded phone call,
”Yes, I've been in contact, too,
and now taking this test is my next thing to do"

Where do the toddlers sleep and play, if their mothers have to break curfew to work in the parks at night, risking arrest in order to feed themselves and their children?

A card that says “I love you more than coffee,” a Mary Oliver poem I wrote out long hand to feel the words, notes and poems from students past, a tiny, crocheted baby yoda in a mask.

I don’t feel like I am a teacher at all anymore. I am now a mental health expert on the brink of mental distress herself. The words grit, resilience, and trauma-informed fill my head.

They tell us that nearly everyone by now knows at least one person who’s contracted the empathy-loss virus. A few have contracted the more virulent compassion-loss virus. Some of us know more than one whose soul has already died from the disease.

He rushes past, barefoot, sanitizer in hand, to take his favorite seat in our living room. Sometimes, he surprises us with homemade chicken soup, fritters, Bacalao, and Jamaican breakfast. Everything I’m not supposed to eat.

I know how it feels to not want to be inside of your home. I know how it feels to stop before entering the door and wanting to cry because you don’t want to go in.

When I was in 8th grade, my homeroom teacher called me a social butterfly. I thought she was complimenting me until I looked closely at her face.