October 27, 2020

when we get through this

When we get through this, I want us to set a table with all of the loaves of bread 
we’d practiced in our quiet houses. I want us clutching fistfuls of the cilantro we coaxed
from our city windowsills, and I want the nascent musicians, the ones who learned 
old songs on their new ukuleles, or warbled choruses on isolated balconies, to take 
the stage together. I want all the knitted, crocheted, stitched, and mended things pooled 
at our feet, warming our ankles. I want us to greet each other in unfamiliar languages, 
to tell the stories of those who have been lost. I want us to look, in unison, 
toward the world millions of miles and light-years away, to take in what is before us, 
and beyond us. I want us to wake to the magnitude of our fortune against the smallness 
of our time. And then I want us to remember this, and to keep remembering.

Maya SteinComment