Secrets of the zoo.

Hand-cut collage on cardboard. 

There are things I do not miss, like traffic. Like leaving a meeting early to get to the children late to take them home exhausted and hungry and angry and go to bed, alone, until the children come and kick and cry.

There's enough time now. We watch the hours, cut them into segments that mean something. We watched birds build a nest and feed their young. The morning after a storm, the children brought the fallen nest inside. They didn't ask what happened to the birds.

We watched a show where doctors removed a tumor from a snake. The snake died anyway, and the children wept. Outside, the air scent marks the windows and leaves yellow dust. The pollen makes us sneeze and our throats itch. We worry it's a sign.

We avoid people like copperheads on the half-deserted streets. They run past, their sweat and breath insidious. We cling to each other. 

We learn there's a tiny, crystal microphone that hears the language a virus makes by detecting its vibrational frequencies. We learn it's possible to shake a virus to death. The kids jump and shimmy.

We learned that domestic cats think of humans as odd-smelling, clumsy, and inefficient hunters. We're learning so many things. We've never been so well-rested and well-fed. I miss my mother. 

At night, I sit in silence on the floor of my bathroom and listen to myself breathe. There was never time for this.