To a New Dawn: Letters of Solidarity Anthology

FREYJA HOLLINGTON, 15 To the written word, Confined to the papered walls of houses that were only a place of transition. A place for the quiet parts of our busy days; we grow sick of our homes. Once there was a time when we would dream of these spaces; yearn for the mattresses of our beds. Pine for the cushions of our sofas.

But all good things turn sour, sickening, when they are in excess. And when you can’t leave your couch, can’t escape your bedroom. You begin to seek the hum of busy streets, the productive thrumming of quiet cafés, the chatter of a classroom and the overpowering scent of coffee that perfumes the workplace. The mundane of everyday is no longer so tedious, when the everyday itself becomes abstract. Change brings fear, and so we want the comfort of familiarity.

But wanting these things does not do us well. In the end, life is different now, and no amount of dreaming can put us back in the office, the classroom, the café, or the busy streets. So how do we cope? Well, when dreary weather prevented us from enjoying our gardens. When the terrible Wi-Fi kept us from calling those we missed. When the channels on the TV no longer gave us what we wanted. You held our hands and took us to new places.

You had always been there: patient on the shelf or trapped 29