I am the last woman on earth.
I live alone in my house and every day I do the Schedule:
yoga, coffee, meditation, breakfast, look out the window, laundry,
make the bed,
take a shower, take a walk, lie on the floor, wait for the dogs to
jump on me, eat stuff from the fridge,
gaze into it awhile. Brush my hair.
Add blush. Add mascara after thinking about how long it will take
to remove later.
No lipstick.
Yesterday I considered a small glass of red wine with breakfast.
I can’t remember the day.
My neighbor’s new dog barks
enough to make napping problematic.
I drink a lot of tea with half and half and maple syrup which is
tastier than sugar.
After 6 my garage is a café for friends
and dinner comes in white cardboard boxes. We slip food under
our masks like horses with feed buckets or dogs with muzzles.
We are dreamers who believe
next month will bring hope back and neighbors come
two by two
like passengers on Noah’s Ark
run aground and have a hard time leaving.
I’m glad for the distraction and for the wine and anesthesia.
I don’t tell anyone about the hopelessness.
sounds wonderful – have you read the bear? By Andrew Krivak about the last woman on earth – absolutely beautiful..
Love your posts and poems….
Hey, this isolation stuff is almost over for our generation. (Do you remember hiding out from polio back in grade school? No swimming that summer and not much playing with friends. Of the four kids I knew who came down with the disease, three came out okay–one became a nurse, one a mom before age 19, one stayed in a wheelchair for a few years, but eventually learned to walk without crutches….) I’m not deleting this comment-gone-wrong. There was a cheer-up impulse behind it. I was thinking about how our grandchildren will tell their own kids that they’ve got it easy. Back in 2020 . . . . Sorry, Lucinda. Your poem is, as always, beautiful with a bit of doubt peeping out for a second, curious and kind.