January 19th, 2021

Sun rays filtered against my teal kitchen make me feel like a retro baby. Like I should be in a polka dot dress, baking cakes, with the perfect pin-up painted face. When I entered my 20s I came in, hot and heavy, with Hemingway fantasies. Now I sit, hunched over a laptop, gambling with hope, coffee and wine are interchangeable crutches in an old house that creaks at the joints. If I put sunflowers and drying baby’s breath on the wood chipped table I can almost- almost — ignore the calendar, the sirens, the death toll, the headlines breaking a future steeped in nightshade.

-R.E. Strayer