11/11/20

By Josh Rubin

Time ticks on, making me ache with awareness of time’s limit for me. And ache with the larceny against us, the theft of our time and our lives, as we, starved for oxygen, await the end we are being denied. The end of this frozen grimace of an era, an era that hammered home the lesson that we never knew, that we thought we knew, but that we never knew: that tragedy is as human as hope, and that each breath delivers both.

The faint promise of relief comes with such a price tag, doesn’t it? And we will, those of us who see the corona of doom that ominously cradles this thin victory, shoulder the lien on whatever happiness we can manage. This is the light in which some of us see the uncertain celebration of Trump’s defeat.

Nearly half the nation still says yes to the policies and mean-spiritedness that classifies half the world as alien invaders come to rob us. They don’t see their faces, as we do even when we close our eyes.

We must open theirs. It is a heavy lift.

Photo: @Allan Mestel