When will it arrive?
by Luisa A. Igloria

When will it arrive? They laugh at the idea that the final assault is on its way. But you intuit every instance: the body’s anticipation of the viral load, the impact of what’s coming. You feel the heaviness of such knowledge, but you know you want the bud more than the clay, the sweet purl you believe resides in water after its deluge. The good caress of air lives somewhere above layers of smog. See how even dead trees from past seasons want to tremble to life. How fish come back after the nets are destroyed. White trails speckle salvaged wood— efflorescence, the name of salt deposits collecting outside a material’s surface. To save. To render safe. If you stop for a moment to admit I don’t want my children to die before their time, everything that follows becomes a ritual of self-care. We are bound and tripped up, over and over, in entanglements we call history. To want to excise is merely mechanical. But to hear the collective struggle to breathe, to say the unsayable in bounded space? Find a pocket of flesh between your shoulder and jaw. Cradle the elbow of the arm as it burrows into those hidden spaces. Look for the pain of tenderness.