Revisiting Movable Type: Issue no. 2 Featured Writer Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Apex Gazing: A Record of March 2020—Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Excerpt from ALONE TOGETHER: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19
It was the time of late empire,
science and song
were all the rage. Chart after nightly chart
were rushed to the screen. Hieroglyphs
better left undeciphered. The news reports
forecast the magnitude of impending losses,
how late we were
in our arrival.
It was the time of loud lies
and we baked until the stores ran out of flour;
our cookies delectable with a dusting of cinnamon
to warm the tongue, our butter browned, our sugar
raw, indelicate.
It was the time of virtual gatherings
and together we named the flowering street trees
beyond our windows. Prunus spinosa that erupted
in flowers like globes of snow,
prunus serrulata that canopied
our cautious strolls.
Our distant loved ones were closer
and more unreachable as the largest birds
of our era lay dormant in our airports.
They sent photographs of their trees, too.
Tilia cordata
of childhood memory, jacaranda mimosifolia
not yet bloomed, a symphony on the verge.
It was the time of best case scenarios
and we tracked and catalogued, each of us
drafting a field guide for the terra nullius
that awaited us. Stay home Stay home
Melospiza melodia chirped
with singular clarity. Cyanocitta stelleri
rustled through evergreens in azulene flashes,
a choir, discordant,
in the silence of cities ailing
and freeways shorn of their gridlock.
It was the time of paltry metaphors,
and even the believers among us
soured at the prospect of April miracles.
Our grief gusted and down-poured, vernal
restlessness swelling each day beneath our roofs.
It was the time of superlatives,
and we languished. Postponements cluttered
our calendars. Between fears and stretching
we alternated, child and parent, bewildered.
We wiped down every surface, renewed every frailty.
ABOUT LENA KHALAF TUFFAHA
Bio: Lena Khalaf Tuffaha’s first book, Water & Salt, won the 2018 Washington State Book Award for Poetry. Her chapbook, Letters from the Interior, was published in fall 2020.
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