Living

Don’t go out. Don’t go near. Don’t uncover. Just don’t!

We are living the dream.

Those festivities we avoided with such flippant negligence is now a distant memory.

Zoom. Zoom. Google Meet. Teams. Whoop!

Again.

Repeat.

What a way to communicate.

Jokes agitate as Tiktok concentrates the bored.

Meetings with half-dressed workers fade to tirades for and against the vaccines and face masks.

The sound of tumbleweed rolls across school room floors.

Stillness catches on the feet of silent students sitting through online lessons, pretending to care.

Each household occupant mesmerised by screens – all shapes to fit all sizes – fuelling the need to educate and replicate finances.

We grow as people.

News becomes the main course of entertainment; briefings from the Government is seen as prime time television. Yet, it plays out like a soap opera, portraying predictable plots with caricatured speakers grinding out soliloquies of fortitude to the nation.

We grow weary.

‘Get children back to school!’

‘Vaccinate the vulnerable!’

‘Brexit!’

‘Nothing was done fast enough!’

Hyperbole flows in rivers of information, confirmation and confrontation from all corners of the continent. Unsettled murmurs of incompetency grow as fear is replaced by anger. Explanations and apologies hold as much value as a bag of Dolly Mix.

In the meantime, we count the souls like lost teeth.

More bitter than sweet.

Life becomes hard to swallow.

Copyright ©Eloise De Sousa (2021). All rights reserved.