We are cloistered now
and I rarely know what day it is.
The hours, the minutes, they keep folding over
onto themselves.
The days are all so quotidian
but I’ll be damned if I am any
more virtuous.
I am woefully inept at navigating a pandemic.
To pass time, I bake bread.
It doesn’t rise and I swallow pride
but my middle son
he breaks it
slathers it with Irish butter
declares it good.
I take in the sight of him.
He towers over me now with a
Romanesque nose I do not recognize.
And I laugh.
Perhaps, the story of this lifetime of days
confined, together
will be marked, henceforth, by the
shape of our love.
How we quietly heeded a new commandment.
Broke bread.
Remembered.
Lived into our own Holy Thursday.
Over and over and over.
Holly is a wife, very relaxed homeschooling mom of three boys, snapper of photos, coming of age writer and a soul drowning in grace. After years in Atlanta where she attended college, married the love of her life and lived in an intentional community, she found her way back to her home state of Missouri. She now lives in an antebellum stone house, raises chickens (sometimes) and pretends that she lives in the country.
