CHUKA

I have always longed to be known, truly known, by another human being. Sometimes we live for years with yearnings that we cannot name.

- CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

Until a crack appears in the sky and widens and reveals us to ourselves, as the pandemic did, because it was during lockdown that I began to sift through my life and give names to things long unnamed. I vowed at first to make the most of this collective sequestering: if I had no choice but to stay indoors, then I would oil my thinning edges every day, drink eight tall glasses of water, jog on the treadmill, sleep long, luxurious hours, and pat rich serums on my skin. But, only days in, I was spiralling in a bottomless well. Words and warnings swirled and spun, and I felt as if all human progress was swiftly reversing to an ancient stage of confusion: don't touch your face; wash your hands; don't go outside; spray disinfectant; wash your hands; don't go outside; don't touch your face. Did washing my face count as touching? I always used a face towel, but one morning my palm grazed my cheek and I froze, the tap water still running. I was alone in my house in Maryland, in suburban silence, the eerie roads bordered by trees that themselves seemed stilled. No cars drove past. I looked out and saw a herd of deer striding across the clearing of my front yard. About ten deer, or maybe fifteen, nothing like the lone deer I would see from time to time chewing shyly in the grass. I felt frightened of them, their unusual boldness, as though my world was about to be overrun not just by deer but by other lurking creatures I could not imagine. My joints throbbed, and the muscles of my back, and the sides of my neck, as if my body knew too well that we are not made to live like this.