Monday, April 6, 2020

My wife made another lemon cake.
My wife said my keystrokes on the laptop sounded like the gentle patter of rain.
My wife finished her doctorate in educational leadership, and my dad responded by saying he had a doctorate in concrete.

Sunday, April 5, 2020

It’s understandable to feel cheated out of what would have been our time together.
Maybe we just got a weird and unexpected head start at what’s next.
You asked: But you said this for what? I said: Catharsis.

I spent a long time curled up in a ball on the couch today, staring out the backyard window.
I can’t remember trying so hard to empty my mind of responsibility, to let myself be still.
The dog came to me unprompted, bunted the couch, touched his nose to my hand, and wagged.

Saturday, April 4, 2020

Give me chicken koobideh and halved tomatoes, chargrilled on seekhs right over the open coals.
Serve it on top of basmati rice, yellowed from saffron, with a hunk of socarrat on the bottom.
Take me to your parents’s backyard in the spring of 2001, when your house was my house a few months before all our worlds burned.

Friday, April 3, 2020

I wear a mask for my father, a cancer fighter still undergoing chemotherapy treatments;
for my mother, an immuno-compromised diabetic;
and for the elders in my circle, who are all at risk.

Thursday, April 2, 2020

Who is speaking for the janitors?
Who is speaking for the farmworkers?
Who is speaking for the detained migrants?