The morning news feed tries to change the subject, distracting us with finances and football scores, skirting the issue with poverty and war—but we all know death is contagious. That’s why it’s not wise to make eye contact with the pregnant woman in line at the gas station buying a pack of cigarettes.
There’s cancer hiding within the fine print.
*
Or maybe it is just that life is not communicable, because the man in the park with the parachute and the broken leg has no words of wisdom for the girl with two brilliant white wings extending from her back. She’s asking for change that she says is for an operation to get them removed.
“What’s the use in having wings, if you never learn to fly?” she asks.
And to keep from having to talk to her, a woman pushing a baby carriage gives her a dollar, even though she knows what the girl is really going to use it for.
*
No matter what you believe, there is an epidemic—the stores are closed early, and everyone is either at church praying, or at home in gas masks, duct-taping cardboard to their windows, and eating food from a can. All except for a group of mimes, standing under the gazebo as it starts to rain.
…They have drawn themselves into an invisible box which they can’t get out of.
*
The streets are deserted.
We are as alone in life as we are in death, the philosopher realizes, as he wanders home from his job at the convenience store. But he is too busy trying to decide if the man with his mouth open in the window of the Chinese restaurant had made a sound—to notice a car speeding through the caution light at the intersection.
And when he starts across there is no one to tell him to look up. The man bleeding to death in the street is not there.
We are only passing through.