Hineni

By Ione Heigham

Here I am and there I go As I spend the next few months alone, how do I keep life from passing me by? I wake up- eat, go for a walk, read, do homework, chat on the phone, embroider, go to bed. I wake up- eat, go for a walk, read, go to bed. I wake up- eat, go to bed. I wake up- go to bed. minutes blend into hours, hours into days, days into months. I think about classes and Brown I ponder the writings of 7th century philosophers I watch t.v. shows set in New york, Chicago, LA I talk to friends living far away I think about everything except where I am right now. How can I be so restricted to one place, and yet so disconnected from where I stand? Here I am, Yet there I go- escape routes disguised as intellectual curiosity think about everything except the virus. do not accept the virus this is not real. this is extremely real. Could this be diaspora? I am sleeping in my childhood bed, this is my home- this does not feel like home. home is where I cook breakfast with my friends, play monopoly with my family, stay up all night with Elyana. this is a silent house. the new rules are unfamiliar, my dad hasn’t hugged me since I came home it is not his fault he is scared. me too. Here I am, God! I am sitting in the attic of a house in a suburb of Boston, I know you know where I am. but I want you to ask anyways I want to declare for someone to hear- here I am but where are you? the world is falling apart. the world was broken before the virus, will the world be broken after? Tomorrow when I wake what will I do? Tomorrow when we wake what will we do? Where will we stand? Where will we go? For now, here I am.