THOUGHTS FROM THE QUARANTINE A ZINE BY MEL B.C.
I have to google how to spell apocalyptic while the whole city is on lockdown and suddenly I realise I don’t know how to write about the kind of death that is out of my control, doesn’t leave a note I always expected the world to end from inside out
thought I’d be allowed to play God and pick my doomsday on my own terms but I don’t have a saying in this, no weapon in my hands at all
I didn’t expect this one to be the year we’re forced to learn about grief but the other day I made a strawberry loaf cake and I felt like crying the
whole time it was in the oven – it feels unreal like reading a book and knowing it would’ve meant something completely different at a different time –
days blending together but I am here now.
I felt like crying while cutting up strawberries / my girlfriend made me a playlist / I feel the urge to reread The Waves by Virginia Woolf ad I don’t know what it means yet / does the sun still shine if I can’t feel it / my plants are dying and I am a bad person / writing the same poem over and over again / my mother’s birthday is tomorrow and I don’t know how to love her back the way she wants me to / I drew a tarot card from my deck and it was the world / the coffee tastes different from yesterday / days blending into each other
The tiny drop of blood that comes out of sewing needle-poked fingertips / old birthday cards from people that belong to a lifetime ago / freshly shaven legs against clean bedsheets / reaching the last page of a notebook / crossing something off a to do list / waking up in the middle of a dream / the poem “the quiet machine” by Ada Limòn / dancing in underwear / the sun still up at 8 pm / unexpected friends / songs that feel vaguely familiar when listened to for the first time
I am almost twenty-five and I’m making a friendship bracelet for the
first time wasting nostalgia on things that have yet to end not everything is a universal experience but I can’t even relate to things that happened to me I know I must’ve been there yet it sounds like someone else’s story these have always been my hands and legs and lungs I don’t know what my metaphors mean and I don’t have anyone else to ask for clarity I wanted to take a picture but it was gone already nausea a list or a poem or a death count at lunchtime I can tell what the air tastes like moving on and starting over
moving back and doing the same again I can only remember a couple of things that happened in 2008 where does the rest go?
I always burn my fingers on candle wax but I thought this time maybe just this time it wouldn’t be hot