Inhale. So many of us are breathless,

I have no way to process this much pain and this much grief. The quiet desperation is everywhere, in the eyes of masked strangers avoiding you on the sidewalk, in the the bodies of the exhausted and terrified “essential workers” who lack the luxury of staying at home, in the voices of the teachers performing courage in classrooms and on screens.

I have no way to process the callousness, the selfishness. The folks with the work-from-home jobs who refuse to wear masks as they collect their delivered meals from someone making less than minimum wage. The conspiracy theorists harassing doctors and nurses and accusing them of perpetuating a mass fraud. The politicians. The politicians. The politicians.

There is no combination of books or bike rides or yoga classes or long walks or medications that is making any of this better.

And so to the group texts, to the love languages of emojis and memes and Good Tweets and Bad Tweets and videos of adorable creatures doing adorable things. The comfort of small gifts and acts of service. The celebration of each others’ smallest victories and commiseration over the enormity of personal and shared tragedy.