Elm

I spend nearly all my waking hours shuttling between two rooms. I live in one and work in the other. Six city blocks separate them. I wake up in darkness and travel from one room to the other. My journey back is slightly less dark, but upon returning home I inevitably pass out for an hour or two and when I wake up it's dark again. My life is small and drab, a greasy smudge on the damp sidewalk. There will be very little left of me when I go, just some piles of paper and canvas, easily disposed of, or stowed away and forgotten. A few people may think of me occasionally, until they don't. In the meantime, I spend my nights reading. Maybe I paint and draw a bit, watch a movie or some bad TV. It's too hard for me to get around, it doesn't seem worth the effort dragging myself somewhere to sit alone, especially when every night is rainy and cold. Besides, the pandemic is still raging; I don't have much desire to spend too much time indoors, surrounded by crowds of strangers. And so days go by without my having a single conversation longer than a few words, without a single meaningful connection. When I was young, I would watch the lonely older men and wonder how they got to be that way, wonder how they could bear it. Well now I know: they don't. They become dead inside, slowly, like I can feel myself becoming. Like the elms in the park; though they still grow leaves, when a storm brings one down, the splintered trunk is seen to be dry and soft and completely filled with rot.