POETRY: We’re On {Thin Ice}, Maskless in a Crowd

I keep having dreams where I’m maskless.

In the dream, I feel anxious

When I wake up, putting my mask on to take the same walk I have taken one thousand times, I feel awkward—

My head remembering the maskless world I was asleep in, my heart wanting to be there

“One day we’ll be maskless again,” my mom said.

“Maybe it was a premonition,” I said.

I miss everything.

In my dreams, we’re all together and we’re in a crowd

And I’m worried because we’re in a crowd

But we’re all together and we’re laughing

I wonder if I’ll always be worried in a crowd.

But now I’m at home on my couch always,

Time traveling through my TV where it’s mostly the early 2000s, when I was a tween—

And I had my whole life in front of me,

And I have no idea what it means

“Waiting for you is like waiting for rain in this drought,” Hillary says, “useless and disappointing.”

And I say it too.

Because it’s a good line

And I’m happy because I haven’t lost this part of myself

This part that’s fun at parties,

This part that knows when to laugh

There’s this part that my mom gave me that says, “It could always be worse”

And that’s true, but it’s still pretty bad

And I feel bad a lot of the time

And so do you

We’re on thin ice and we’re trying not to break—

But in my dreams, we’re together,

And we’re in a crowd and we’re laughing,

And I can stand this close to you

And one day, that won’t be a dream anymore

One day soon, it’ll be true