a line, a segment

Every breath is one of a finite set. Every day is one of the same. At a certain point the available quantity becomes less certain. Every bowl of popcorn starts to show through what you thought was a full movie's supply. But what if the rest of the popcorn isn't popcorn at all? What if that shit is full of evolved scorpions with the perfect camouflage for killing fat guys from New Jersey. New Jersey seems big, too. When you can't wait to get out of the north, when you're driving across or down to Cape May. It doesn't seem big enough right now, especially if you play the novel coronavirus(es?) forward in 1918 terms. Everything changes (not the 90s Rodan scream of "EVERYTHING CHANGES," more an appreciative view). Children unfold to become themselves. Grown-ups get a chance to change meaningfully, to make amends, to not make the same mistake for the millionth time. Death folds us into the continuum, returns the raw ingredients back into the mix for future repurposing. Every breath is a point on a segment on a line. Or maybe the segment ends and the lines diverge, but there's continuity, right? Not necessarily a dualist construct, but a safe bet that the limits of empiricism aren't the limits of reality either. A prayer to keep you and me alive, to keep our families safe, to keep our frail ones ticking in protective bubbles. A prayer that biodiversity isn't out for us in some M. Night Shyamalan the-trees-are-pissed-and-now-murderous kind of way. A prayer that the dimwitted surface of our national policy response obfuscates a warm-hearted and sharply foresightful reality. I'm good to pray for miracles, each of us is one of those in our way. Each of those breaths, each of these days. Turn that frown upside down.