grief

Today on a run (I run now), Robyn radio was blasting in my ears when Florence + the Machine’s Cosmic Love came on. This is a song that comes up in rotation on this station a whole lot and I always skip it. I’m not sure why. I think it might be that though I love Florence (she’s part of the club too), with her voice that hits me right in the center of my ribcage, there’s something a little too pop-music-y about her music, which is to say, predictable, for my tastes, but today, her voice and that aggressive drumbeat at the song’s start was electricity and I turned the volume all the way up. It was 8am. The park, my beloved McLaren Park, was mostly empty, and there was that weird San Francisco fog that just kind of hovers and holds in heat so even though I couldn’t see the Bay or the buildings, it was so beautiful, and warm, and the air felt clean in my lungs, and my legs were strong underneath me, and it was one of those feel-it-all moments, voice in my ear, drumbeat in my bloodstream, breath in my lungs, legs pumping, one of those moments of feeling so utterly ALIVE that I couldn’t help but, you guessed it, cry.

And I cried—what else is new—and I ran, and her voice was in my ear, in my bloodstream, and I thought about all the hundreds of shows and concerts I’ve ever been to, and those moments when the band plays the first few notes of that song we’re all aching to hear, and there’s that collective thrum and buzz, hearts wide open, and it doesn’t matter who you are or who you are trying to be, we get to lay that all down, and be enchanted, and even though I’d much prefer live music to a sporting event, I get it. We are wired for these cathartic collective moments. Like dancing. And then I imagined, no, I remembered, dancing: Sweat in my scalp and pouring down my forehead, and throwing my body around with all the other bodies, and I ran and I felt my legs pumping underneath me, clean air in my lungs, and I cried, I cried knowing we won’t be able to have this experience for so long, longer than we can imagine, or want to believe, and then I imagined doing all these things, but wearing a mask, all of us together but unable to see the joy and wonder of each other, save for perhaps a crinkling at eyes edges, and this is another thing I’m grieving—your faces!—another thing to pile on to the mountain of heartbreak of this moment.

I read the other day that the effects of this—you know, the pandemic—could last a generation.

I cry now, writing this, because I can’t help it, because while I don’t want to go back to the way things were, there is one thing I would give anything to return to, and that is you. I will never take you for granted ever again, not my arms wrapped around you, not your laughter right there in my ear, and not because we’re FaceTiming, but because you are there, breathing, next to me, all skin and salt and spark, you, and your exquisite humanness, your fumbling imperfections, how I long for you, I’ll take every last bit of you.