Day 617

Blackout.  No way
to reach your aunt, your friend.
The friend who lives
so far away you have never
seen her; but daily
she sends you something
to remind you you’re not
forgotten. Now
there’s nothing, there’s been
nothing for days.  Nothing
to remind you the world
is not just this hell, this
darkness, this viciousness.
This bleak destruction.  Now
the courses you were taking
cannot be taught.  Now the thread
that held you
for months so tentatively
to history, memory — to everything
you’ve dreamed — has been frayed.
And yet you write.  And yet
you sit at the desk you
(miraculously) still have
and write.  Write.