The Lost Years

The golden faces of the Chicago skyline smile at the bare sky. The express lanes are closed. The windows are dark, lifeless. A flight to Italy is two hundred dollars. Something strange has entered our bloodstream from the eastern edge of the world. Spots of red grow on the New York Times’ daily map, like pimples, bloodying and scarring everything it touches. 

Time falls through our fingers like resin pouring through clear glass. We are the generation that caught the burn of the plague. Outside, people demand their right to burn. Stocks melt and fall into cracks, portfolios rocket to the ground. We quantum leap into a different reality. Zoom squares light up dark rooms, neon glows on faces. 

Bodies pile up in the ICU. Venice’s water runs clear from lack of pollution. Masks and sanitizer disappear from hospitals across the planet. Those involved in the opioid crisis scramble to find answers in a needle. Groceries are wiped down before they’re allowed inside. 

The coral reef is dead. The planet chokes in the dark green slime of its own persistence. One friend self-isolates. Another one is given too much prescription cough syrup. We sink into the comfort of loneliness. Nurses are going missing from hospitals. The world turns in patterns. We take our exams online, hoping the roaring 20s will hit soon. 

September is unnaturally hot. Ice cream cones are melting on the sidewalk. Air quality improves in the dead cities. The night sky earns more stars every day. Pharma stocks incline and then slowly cool down like bathwater. More and more places on the street are shuttered up. Nasty divorces fill up court cases. 

Graduation parties, birthdays, weddings, and proms are pushed further and further down the calendar. New virus strains, new phones, new kinds of sugar, new colors of a sunburnt sky, new things to put matcha in, new computer updates, new plans for a digital office, new ways to cook eggs. Bellybutton rings are in again, and so are butterfly clips and low-rise jeans and telling your parents what you really think. 

Greek houses are shut down, 5G has become a national network, city rents hike up as life restarts. Those with faith, starve, those who can, pillage. All of the colas taste flat. Mornings feel like bruises, the world resents the bustle it used to find a home in. Salvation isn’t in a syringe. The Super Bowl ad budgets blow through the roof. You can tell if someone is smiling even if they’re wearing a mask.