"Late Summer, 2020" a poem by Jenner Daelyn

​​From the "Once Upon a Pandemic" service on August 16, 2020

​Maybe there is a ghost of the year
that would have been
haunting this one
running parallel
an alternate universe
alien, but familiar
a shimmer on the horizon
near enough that in the night time quiet
we can hear the lives we should be
living
echoes in the next room
in a house that we know is empty

Time doesn't work well here in this year
not anymore
(time never works well in a nightmare)
days blur together
formless and sagging
and in the blurring of time
we can see snippets
of what this year could have been
a curtain blowing gently
when there isn't any wind

Maybe, in the ghost year, the world
As we know it
hasn't ended yet
maybe the people in that year
​still have the "old normal"
maybe they can still
gather, sing, hug,
talk, travel, worship,
shakehands,
go to school,
have brunch,
celebrate weddings,
and mourn together at funerals,
without risking
... everything

​In that year, maybe
hundreds of thousands of people
are alive
while they're dead in this one.
Maybe there, their graves remain
undug.
Maybe there, the living are unhaunted.
And in that ghost year,
maybe a version of me exists,
and maybe the grief I've carried since
March,
like a cold and heavy stone in my heart,
doesn't.

Jenner Daelyn finds inspiration for her art and poetry in liminal spaces - physical, emotional, and spiritual - looking for meaning by exploring the in-betweens.