Everything

Every tiny little thing

Not tiny anymore

Throbbing, now, with consequence

Random, rash commitments

Lifelong outcomes

Romantic, almost, such wild intensity

Sternly black-clad beckonings

Of dread long-haul Covid disease

And looming gloomy long-faced death

Stand just beyond each mundane choice

Each silly moment of a silly worldly day

To venture out to buy a loaf of bread

Begins the same-old question round

You deemed it needed, yes

But what is need? You'll easily survive

Without that chunk of sour rye or wheat

And entering the bakery-café

Endangers all the heroes working there

in these dark times

Asks them to die for you

Before, they were just singers, strummers

sassy actors, sundry recent film school grads

Good humoured, scornful, cranky maybe,

or pretentious in their part-time, retro bread-bag gigs

Now they're heroes, imperilled here by you

in these dark times

Nobly selling buns at risk of their fine lives

As, selfish, you breathe moistly through your mask

Upon their cloudy bakeshop plexiglass

Approaching fluffy condo dog tugs long leash

Whine-barks a bit, does puppy eyes, then sudden turns

leaps up on you — unthinking in that moment

(distrait no doubt in these dark times)

you bend down, stroke that friendly, furry, panting face

And — hear a high-pitched human gasp

look up to see an angry glare

Above a butterfly bedizened mask

flanked by two earbuds and their dark, down-curved cords

Silent messages come through crystal clear

You're TOO CLOSE! Sidewalk's not THAT wide! Don't TOUCH!

The leash gets yanked, the dog dragged off

No heroes here — this angry lady will not die for you

at least, not willingly — your too-late sorries,

crippled gestures, placatory smiles (unlike her,

you're unveiled, unmasked — her angry stare speaks out,

says in these dark times your naked face is one more crime) —

your weak and wan apologies will cut no ice

silent, seething, she looks back to her glove-gripped phone

strides off —her dog, contaminated now by unheroic you,

still whining, gazing back

The bathroom light has just . . . gone dead

and stupid you, you never learned, cannot rewire it

But . . . bringing someone skilled into your home

Your 'household bubble,' now a thing, a common phrase

Such home-base entries now deemed deadly, spread disease

Censured by our stricture-wielding leaders' endless talk

although, of course, exceptions will be made

In an emergency — what's an emergency?

Should hero electricians, total strangers

Die for you, just because you kind of like

To have access to quick-flick light

in these dark times

Just because you kind of like

in these dark times

To read while lolling in your lilac bubble bath?

***

Part 2 of "Will you die for me?" follows