Fear Of The Outside

The light outside is blistering bright Enough to burn away the cloak of deception I have wrapped around myself Enough to shake off the dust of inactivity But to brave the sun is to court the disaster that dwells under its glare It is cold and stark and unclean Outside is where the "other" dwells, the everything and anything And the creeping horror that cannot be seen The disease that makes every other person an enemy So I lock myself in my home And lose myself in the fictions that pretend the pandemic hasn't happened yet Occasionally looking out the windows At a world crippled, a world terrified, a world baffled, a world enraged A world in denial A world that waits for it all to be over A world scrubbing its hands furiously to keep the fear at bay Don't touch anyone out there. Don't touch anything out there Stay six feet away from every other living thing--or you might wind up six feet under Don't read the news to see the rising numbers of the people infected Statistics like ever-shifting, slippery grave markers for the loved ones lost No mask, no gloves, no hand sanitizer is strong enough To save you from a disease so deadly That it robs you of two years of your life, even if you don't catch it The outside reaches in