sgatazmy

Every morning, I wake up and briefly wonder if everything has been an odd dream. Perhaps on April Fools Day someone will jump up and announce it’s all an elaborate joke?

Each day brings great joy but also palpable anxiety. I once wrote a poem and I can’t get it out of my head because it seems so fitting now in this surreal world. I hug my kids close and make sure to spend more time with them despite my work as I hear this poem in my mind. How quickly everything changes.

I fear for my parents. I fear for my family. I fear for my country.

My very old poem written when I was a teenager:

Who will be dead when I wake up tomorrow?

Will it be the kid down the street?
The one I never got a chance to meet?

Will it be the boy in chemistry?
The one who sat right next to me.

Maybe it will be someone I knew.
Maybe it will even be you.

And if I don’t wake up tomorrow,
would you mourn with true sorrow?

And indeed if it were I,
would you notice that I died?