True, Through, Together

A poem that encourages you to keep the faith in humanity especially in this time of pandemic

True, Through, Together,

Fransivan MacKenzie

This is how we feel each other

without touching -

I trap the most haunting melody

I've ever heard

into the pages of my piece

for everyone to flip through,

to listen to, to pulse under the thump

of a broken heartbeat.

If you find it, treat it like

a candle in a torched chapel,

like a quiet flag of a flame capable

of turning everything into a gray mist.

My friend in Jacksonville

said she misses the way she used

to watch my spectacle of eating

fish without a thorn getting

stuck in my throat. I laughed on the

other side of glass and remembered

of what I've recently learned about catfish -

how it scavenges on almost everything,

hoards debris in its belly,

gorges in everything that can silence its hunger

even if it's deadly.

I take comfort in knowing

I'm not the dumbest specie on Earth.

An actor who plays the role of a firefighter

and a lover of my favorite Grey's Anatomy chief

read a children's storybook and posted it

on Instagram for little ones to enjoy.

I'm already eighteen yet I devoured

the entire video for the sake of hearing

his raspy, beautiful narration.

I never liked Spiderman until this morning.

My friend who lives mountains away

from where I am never fails to remind me

how distance is but a number

for people pulled closely by a string of a true friendship.

She teaches me how to prepare a certain kind of coffee,

tells me how she's taking some subjects through the blue glow of her screen,

shares these templates that pique my interest,

and Facebook posts I am fond of reading.

I am convinced she knows me more than

the ones from my neighborhood do.

She's a rare gift of sisterhood I treasure.

This is how I know as an individual

that we are connected in the midst of isolation,

that even though our fingers are gloved,

we are hand-in-hand in fighting this war,

that even though our faces are masked,

we are still capable of being vulnerable and true to one another,

that even though we are apart in meters, miles, and days,

there are still millions of ways we can hold each other to prove

we are all in this together.