Gone

This has been a disorienting year. COVID pulled the rug out from underneath us, people have died both from the virus and for other reasons, and usual routines have been upended. These thoughts played in my mind as I gazed through a predawn window high above the city, recently.  

Gone

Disconcerting

not to locate a familiar structure

on the horizon. A landmark

disappeared.

An emptiness,

a shift in perspective, a deletion

tugging.

In reality, fogginess blankets

the night and dissolves

solid buildings into nothingness.

I know daytime sunshine

will reveal the missing architecture,

erase this mistaken loss.

But across town my daughter-in-law

holds only memories and pictures

of her deceased father

buried a COVID world away

                                        without her.

Marilyn Aschoff Mellor