It's 3 AM, finally finished my readings on ancient Macedonian naval devices. Couldn't tell you anything about them, though, so don't ask. The class whose essay I was writing doesn't start until 12. Pretty sure I can finish this if I wake up at 10. I just want to sleep.

This leg won't stop fucking bouncing. I've written 4 poems and half an essay. I've written 4 poems and half an essay in this sitting, Coltrane's quartet playing soft from my CD player a room over. I set it to loop so I've one less decision to make on this mad dash tonight.

I reply "Really?"
"No," she giggles, You've got to put up your posters. I can even donate some. If you want, I mean."
"I'd like that, if you really want."
-~- APRIL 2020 -~-
The house sets forever. Maybe I will, too. Be in the place I'm supposed to be and have an eternal ache to move.

Time to put off my assignments and have a gut dread for the ages. I head outside, wading through tall wild grass toward the winding creek. I need the sound of water slowly, violently eroding rock.
Domestic silence drives me crazy.
-~-
"I like how, um... minimal you've made your room," Charli says.

"waves". "Last wave's got maybe three people left," he'd say. I ask how many's in the next. "I've heard maybe 15 at most. People understandably get paid for the 3-day training and dip."

jab. The nature of the calls changes as needed, meaning most new employees are like reaper messengers. Letting strangers know by phone their test results for the virus. Chris explained the turnover exploded over the past two weeks, with each cohort of new hires being referred to more as movements -

to even turn my computer on.
Chris leaves for work as he's on-call 24/7. Said he'll be by later, just has to install Windows on 230-odd devices. His call center is two towns over, in a similar scant sprawl down the highway. Weird, weird place. Type where a manager might fake you out with a feigned

student orientation two years ago, and I access every possible material digitally now. Sure as hell not paying for any of them. Piracy's grown in popularity, anyways.
I chose these classes because they piqued my interest, and now I can barely sit through a page. Per usual, I'm going to wait all day

Neil Diamond's "Cracklin' Rosie" enters my ears' periphery. TV was on all night.
First thing's on my mind's the readings I've put off all week. School's gone remote, reduced to simulation screens of an institution all the students are still paying full-price for. A grant gave me a laptop during

Birds tweet out of my phone's stock alarm with hard sun ascending through the square living room window. A stern buzz fills morning's void of sound. Summer's insects are here early. I wake up fast, Chris a bit slow. We ended up sleeping on opposite ends of a faux leather wraparound brown couch.

from our rural home, all the way to California. With clarity, I see myself from above. A scared child sobbing into his pillow. His mom trying to comfort with words I can hardly make out. A stellar report card lays bedside. I feel it, too - dad's been on the road, and will be for a while.

So here we are in my father's house, out in the sticks of the sticks. Dad's 60, trucking from the Carolinas up to our homestate Michigan. I don't know if he'll be home this month.
-~-
I dream of the time before. Often. Tonight's sleepfocus is the period of my childhood where dad's route took him

Even then, Chris and I have locked in our pandemic social circle. We weren't chancing a horrific illness. I'm a full-time student at a once-prestigious university and he's a system admin for a call center. Catching the virus would halt our lives more than this half lockdown already has.

could anticipate any form of a tomorrow. I might as well unpack my Playstation so we have something to do on this clear sky Saturday night. Should we make the hour-drive to Charlotte, there wouldn't be any nightlife to enjoy. All the clubs are on some precarious operating hiatus.

A couple misfires from his lighter and I offer mine, no doubt almost empty, also.
All my belongings are still boxed up from when the university told everyone to evacuate dorms two weeks ago. Made the 6-hour roundtrip to pack up, knowing intimately with each fresh minute nobody, not even the college,

-~-
"How much longer do you think we'll be in this shit," Chris asks half-heartedly for the third time this week. We're a month into the U.S. declaring a state of emergency over a viral outbreak. "I still dunno. We said a month, tops, and here we are." I pass him a loosie from my L&D menthol pack.

Not like knowing would've mattered, would've helped them prepare. Chris was 20, and I 21. A fledgling coder and a professor-to-be.
My backpocket buzzed with an email sent to my student account. The spring break I was enjoying became extended. Indefinitely.