Pandemic Meditations is a weekly series in which writers, artists, musicians, and all the creative sorts share reflections, journals, and more in response to the current pandemic.
October is about to go, but you need not worry--we will return next week because November is scheduled, even if the pandemic refuses to be.
Please welcome YA author Trace Kerr to the series.
~ E.P.
😷
A Wild Rabbit
by Trace Kerr
By nature, I am an Optimistic Pessimist. I’m always certain things will go wrong. On the face of it, I may sound very doom-scrolly, like some Cassandra shouting all the terrible crap that might happen to the world.
However, as an Optimistic Pessimist, I also constantly formulate contingencies in case SOMETHING needs to be done.
Honestly, in a good year it’s tiring listening to my anxious mantra of “what might be?”
And now?
2020 is driving my brain into the ground. There’s an entire pet store’s worth of thoughts running in the wheel of my brain. How can you plan for this kind of year? I can’t. None of us can.
That trailing spiderweb in the wind of loss and uncertainty has stretched me to a ravelling. When I’m at my most desperate, I turn to poetry because painting with words makes me feel safe and gives me hope. Here is one.
October
Tuesday morning bit with the teeth of autumn
and I felt. For the first time
I didn’t worry over shoulds.
Nothing amazing happened
yet the day was wonderous:
a golden treasure of small things.
I
Baked bread
Hung out laundry and watched my hens bully yellow petaled Brown-eyed Susans
Read and read and read
Talked with my children and marveled at how damned funny they are together
My mother-in-law texted: A wild rabbit needed rescue
He was calm in the old fishing net before we let him go
I
held the day in my hands and didn’t think
about how March to September passed in a confusion
of masks and
social distancing and
our fucking pandemic.
Seven months. Until I woke up
on this single Tuesday
and discovered myself
outside my head.
🕮
Trace Kerr is a lifelong Pacific Northwesterner who loves writing stories about undaunted queer teens and magic. Her debut YA novel, The Names We Take came out in May of 2020.
When she isn't writing, Trace is the producer and co-host for Brain Junk, a lighthearted fact-finding podcast that sometimes airs on Spokane Public Radio.
She lives, loves, and sometimes goes a little crazy in Spokane with a gardening-crazed chemist, one kid who's still at home, several chickens, three cats, and the sweetest chocolate lab named, Ruby.
You can find her on Twitter as @teakerr, on Instagram as trace.kerr, and on her website TraceKerr.com
❤ Read more Pandemic Meditations at http://www.erinpringle.com/p/pandemic-meditations-series.html
