The Corona Walk............property of Julianna Rowe

The Corona Walk:   Property of Julianna Rowe 

It had been a long three weeks on the inside with what seemed like a prison with no bars.  The walls carried themselves closer and closer to me as though they were asking for or needing something.  I tried to keep them at bay for they frightened me with their non-descript attitude and lack of emotions.   Yet I needed them and they needed me as both stood against the other in the fear of each other's neediness.  

 And then came the day of partial release meaning I could leave the presence of those needy walls and saunter to the mailbox and the outside world.  But only for a short duration they say.  Who is they you ask?  The government of course, the ones who put their men of martial order on each street with the shiny badges and leather holsters of killing.  Would they kill me if I left sooner?  Maybe.  So, I didn’t because they owned me.  

I walked to the outside touching the lock or a knob or a key thinking it might murder me. Then to the outside world I sauntered in trepidation.  Why wasn’t anyone else out there with me? At least the walls inside hailed toward me in some measure of wantonness.  I was momentarily bankrupt of mind yet adequate enough wishing to run back to the isolation and nothingness.  And then I heard something it as I peered out searching for the sound of life but there was no life.  One car passed carrying some sense of hope for the living.  There it is again, that sound.   I walked further on the gray cement hearing only my footsteps click clack click clack and then that other sound again.  I searched from left to right up and down but only saw the emptiness of each storefront, each abandoned parking stall and then I saw it, the sound that is.  Crackling like little sticks brushing against one another but it wasn’t, it was a whirlwind of leaves circling about like happy children playing so peacefully.   Hippity Hop tumbling and giggling in the chilly fresh air of nature.  No other sounds were heard because there was a barrenness of humans on the streets.   

Then I saw from my left side, a woman walking toward me, but as she came closer, twenty feet, she oddly crossed over the grey deserted cement to the parking lot allowing herself to have no human contact with me at all.  I thought to myself, “I won't hurt you, or will I?”  To her I was a possible murderer and to me she should have been.   

Then I heard the sound of the birds frolicking in the trees like I didn’t exist.  They used to flee from me but not anymore because it was there turn for me to flee.  You see the humans were fleeing now and mother nature had her house back.  The leaves told me so as did the birds along with the silence of nature who woke from her forever prison of hibernation from the humans ruling. It was her turn.  And I enjoyed every moment of each blade of grass singing to the heavens their freedom from man's chemicals.  Each tree budding not because it was man's calendar called Spring rather each bud was her freedom from the human.  The sky was clear and reflecting itself upon me clean and in thankfulness and some arrogance of its freedom from all human pollution.  It appeared like the water off a paradise island where you can see through it freely, no interruptions as in no plastics, no oil, no garbage, and no chemicals. The sky was free indeed from the humans.  The trees swayed as though speaking their independence, the leaves were dancing, and the birds were singing.   

Mother nature had spoken to me and I heard and felt her. She was alive and my people were not.  At least the Universe had shut them down temporarily so Mother Nature could be reborn. How long will that last?  I don’t know but I do know there must be a reason.