A Suburban's Epidemic

Even a short trip to the city felt scandalous. Back when everyone in the world had something in common besides being human. That's when the buddy bench went out of business. TV time replaced church and recess. Even the cloud gate had no entrants, not including the lonely CTA conductors. Arbitrary glass barriers everywhere we go now. We have the superspreaders to thank for the herd immunity. They lived as shadows, like nuclear blast victims painted onto a concrete wall. Discretely we’d hit up the fairgrounds on a Friday, next door to the courthouse where we thought we’d go if they caught us. We sunflower girls and boys just needed some rays—how criminal. In the summer, Galena getaways were as close as we could get to paradise. Solitude takes practice, standing in the driveway looking for a conversation to have. But in the end we shed the old reality and found new appreciation for the mundane. Boredom has a certain appeal to it now, doesn't it?