The Plague

A sad sort of Spanish wailing is coming from the downstairs apartment across from me. The wind is strong. The leaves are big and brittle. It is not fall. 

Everyone is LA is thinking about the plague. They are trying to avoid it. They are pretty sure they will, since they’re good people and good people never get the plague.  

And still there is wind in the trees and a sun overhead. Dolloped skies and mustard bees and halcyon sidewalks cracked up into smiles by the roots of trees and the stamping feet of city pilgrims. 

Tempt me, nature. Fallow, fickle, dribbling and then, all at once, dry. There was a song I knew in my childhood. Did it leave on the wings of some passing bird? Was it lost in the rush and the shuffle? What sun soaked moments live beyond this fishnet veil, this viral shadow dancing phantom, in and out of time? A pulsing human terror, older than this virgin sprawl, than this spewing waste of man, floats perennially on the smokeless, urban breeze. It reminds us we are human and we die. 

Still, there are spring afternoons that fall like soft strokes over a piano, black after white, black after white, a falling in rhythm, cascading and then, sadly, quiet. And then, sadly, quiet and quite alone. 

A few things I could say for sure; there was an apple orchard and a cherry red car. A rigid woman with wormish lips who worked in the library who smiled without moving her mouth.Pink paint chips and sour little flowers and the hope that one day I might be beautiful.