QUARANTINE DISPATCH: Kim Talbert

She taunts me with her freedom, but I don’t mind. Every day she comes at the same time, her little tufted brown head dipping into my backyard pool. I don’t know how long she’s been coming. I know it’s been a week. I feel like it’s been more like a month. Her official bird name is black phoebe, and she spends each day flitting from the rock wall to the deck to the hot tub, catching insects in her beak as she flits. I call her Phoebe. The sarcastic part of myself says, “How original.” The more forgiving part of myself says, “Relax. We’re all just trying to get through this.”

The two novels I was working on before this pandemic sit firmly on my laptop. I laugh at the thought of working on them now. Nothing I work on seems to matter. The first, a young adult novel about a girl who didn’t get into any of the colleges she applied to, seems silly, as I look over at my teenage son who can’t go to school and see his friends. The second novel, about a lonely woman who concocts ten ways to make new friends, seems ridiculous in this cruel pandemic, since humans can’t shake hands or touch each other’s shoulders, or laugh within six feet of each other anymore. How could she possibly go out and meet anyone right now? 

And, so I get up each morning, forgiving myself for just getting by. I watch television and movies with my family. I read books on pandemics. I watch lectures on classic novels on my phone. I try to write about something, but mostly it’s about nothing. I cook. I clean a little. Sometimes I take a shower, and sometimes I know what day it is. Phoebe usually comes around dinnertime. I wait for her, like a child anticipating the first day of school. How is she today? Where has she been? Did she see her friends and family? And, if she skips a day, I’m disappointed. She’s one of the few constants in my life. I want to whisper to her, “Go have fun out in the world, Phoebe.”