Quarantine Check

DEBBIE WILLIAMS

April 26, 2020

                -1-

Cooing of a zebra dove

turns out to be a mockingbird.

Tones like sunrise 

shatter into diving screeches over my head

the further I walk under the nesting tree. 

Dead limbs masked by undeveloped green.

The nest, exposed only by flapping and original cries.

I step quickly, lightly away from the tree, 

away from the crunching, 

from threatening the family.

An otherness of song returns.

                  -2-

Stepping back into the curbs, 

I kick through veins of leaves,

crashed, crispy.

Yesterday, leaf blowers whined, 

dismissing the last of autumn in the dregs of March.

I can’t decide how so many crispy mounds 

nestled into hub caps, along rims of concrete.

Where do the dead hide?

                   -3-

My phone pulses, 

my oldest child’s first 

call of the day. 

“Yes, Sweet Girl, I’m home.

I’m ‘sheltering in place—’ 

I was taking a walk.

Just a mockingbird and dead leaves.

Now, Honey, we’ve had this talk. 

You’ll do fine without me. 

No, I have no plans for dying any time soon. 

Yes, promise I’ll be careful.

Love you, too.”

I lie about being home,

about wearing a mask.

I gaze back at my house.

Silencing my ringer, 

I cram the phone into a jean pocket,

spin, crunch further away. 

My steps splinter a coo.

DEBBIE WILLIAMS has published creative non-fiction in The Concho Review and Ten Spurs, and co-authored The Monstrous Discourse in the Donald Trump Campaign: Implications for National Discourse. She received her doctorate in English from Purdue and currently teaches at Abilene Christian University where she also directs the writing program.