My world is small now. I wake up at daybreak and have two iced coffees with my mom and dad. Sometimes we go for a short walk around the neighborhood, a wooded suburb in Connecticut. I left New York City at the beginning of the pandemic and have only been back once, to drop off my nephew in Brooklyn after his golf camp out here.  I work remotely writing specialty occupation visa application reference letters for software developers, computer systems analysts, electrical and electronics engineers, financial analysts, marketing managers. I take a break and go for a long walk along my childhood running route.  When I finish work, I watch the news and streaming TV series and movies with my parents who are retired. I write daily diary entries on my phone and sometimes I come up with a poem. I used to be inspired by random encounters in the city but now I have to find inspiration in my very small life in quarantine.

Spring

Spring came as the virus spread and most days I left quarantine at my parents’ house in Connecticut to walk through the neighborhood, delighted by blooming magnolias, apples, forsythia, cherries, dogwoods, azaleas, daffodils, bluebells. I watched buds on maples, elms, oaks turn into lush leaves. I counted the walkers, runners, and bikers, about a handful to two dozen, saying hello as I passed by, and I wondered how long it would be before I got back to New York, to the life I had before the pandemic.

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