Ruth Flohr: I write memoir, poetry, and creative prose. I also operate Wordwifery Writing hosting memoir and creative writing groups. My current projects include my memoir “Army Brat: The Vietnam Years” and co-authoring “Faces of Wendell: An Oral History.” I am not a Straw Dog Writers Guild Member. Franklin County.
Dreams in the Age of Covid19
Last night I dreamed the sky melted into butter and bubbled pink balloons. I grabbed the bubbles and tied them to strings and ran as fast as I could, doing my best to outrun the last day, the smoke of the sun burning out chasing me all the way. I knew that soon the world would turn dark and the butter into ice but still I ran and ran, the pull of the bubbles growing lighter and lighter.
This morning felt like most spring mornings in New England. A little too cold, a flock of blue jays squawking, a nearby woodpecker sculpting a tree into a holy shrine, and the sun licking its way into the room through cold glass. “Come on in, make yourself at home,” I say to the sun. “Stay a while. You warm the air and I’ll heat the coffee.”
I try to imagine this day any other way, and several dark scenarios pass through like echoes of yesterday’s fears. And the day before that. “The days seem to blend together after a while,” I say to the sun as I pull back the curtains. I figure the sun knows about this, biding time, hoping for the best, just doing what it does: shine, hide behind clouds, cut through the ozone, wake the world. I know it’s indifferent, that it doesn’t really care what happens. That it doesn’t anguish and hope for anything other than what it is. “I think you must be a god of some sort. I do all the talking, all the worrying, all the regretting and you just shine, saying nothing.”
Today is another day of slow motion living and running away from pink bubbles that bop around my head like birthday balloons about to pop.