Saint Ann's High School Literary Magazine

Quarantine Three pairs of black pants, slung over the shower curtain rod, drip their dyes ominously into the tub. The bathroom is not large to begin with, and the pants cut off a third of the space. When I look away, those wet shadows creep across my peripherals. Closing in.

I generally avoid this bathroom except to brush my teeth in the morning. For most of my life, I used this one exclusively, but now when I step into the tub all I can think of is broken bones: that debilitating itch under the cast, running hot water over my left foot, trying to keep the smell away. Fortunately, we have a second bathroom. The light in there is a warmer color, and besides, it’s closer to my room.

In my room, I spend a lot of time in other places. I crawl inside my computer and do the best I can to entertain myself. Most of the time, I keep a FaceTime tab open, the closest I can get to putting my head on a shoulder. We listen to music punctuated by occasional complaints. We’ve run out of things to talk about, tired of looping the same conversations over and over, in just the way that the days are passing.

When my eyes start to burn from the screen, I lie down and shuffle through memories. When I was younger someone told me that every time you recall a memory, you’re really recalling the last time you remembered it. I think about that a lot, and feel my memories distorting the more I touch them. A few have this patina over them, scabs over a spot scratched too often and too deep. I avoid those for fear of losing them.

But some, when they blur, sweeten as well. I hear a certain song and I’m on a cold beach, the strings of my sweatshirt cinched all the way against the wind, remembering something else. The Long Island Sound crashing on shell fragments is the soundtrack for my heart breaking, for the end of love, for seeing over and over the moment I became alone. And somehow, these tangled images feel like tea with honey to me now. I miss the beach and the broken heart. What I’d do to go back to that beautiful place, where I was crying.

I do get outside a bit. I go up to the roof at least twice a week and I put on lipstick to do it. The roof of my apartment building is where the nineteenth floor would be. 190 feet in the air. That high up, everything looks just the same as it did two months ago. Manhattan skyscrapers would never let on about what chaos happens in and around them.

I even went for a walk the other day. I had gloves on, and a mask. I miss being the type of girl who wears rings. I used to wear a big green stone on my right index finger, glittering purple on the others, like a pigeon’s neck.

The pigeons, in fact, are as populous as ever. I went cautiously to Union Square, and saw a man sitting on a bench with a circle of birds around him, the first of three men in the park who were there to feed the pigeons. Union Square was desolate by its usual standards, but crowded for a quarantine, with about one person per bench. Quite a few were 164