I blame it on the quarantine.It’s become part of what gets me to the bare crammed room. Every morning and evening, peeking out. Tiny yellow lights across back alley. Slight testimony of movement.
‘Did you notice that the kitchen across the way is more spacious than ours?’ I asked my partner who didn’t reply. She’s more like my mother, who doesn’t ask questions.
I feel a ghost line with that other square across the way, like it’s the only access I have to life outside. A life that doesn’t belong to me. I’m trying not to watch explicitly. A non-direct gaze in case they are looking my way.
Sometimes, I wonder if they notice the small irregularities of a stranger’s daily routine. My first attempt at an online Zumba class, flopping up and down on carpet. The amount of time I’m keeping here, staring at the surface of my laptop. Watching for illicit lovers sneaking past quarantine lines. I spend most of my time in a curled position, hunched over keyboard, staring up two monitors, squinting into setting light.
I wish we were friends. The woman in outline carrying a struggling baby, the man in view chopping. In another dream, we copy the Italian neighbors throwing windows open, singing for their healthcare workers, first responders, virus dispatchers. Pots and pans blasting. In this one, no one has turned on the light last night or this morning.
Yesterday, in a Zoom meditation, our bell master showed us one of the Thich Nhat Hanh’s calligraphy poems.“The Insight That Brings Us to the Other Shore.” I am waiting out the window, watching for a glimpse of another’s breath, another tiny shore.
Tonight, I’ll hope for the small light opening out of the corner of my eye. A hello.
–Ching-In Chen, Seattle, WA