Photo courtesy the author space after caption Luke O'Neil has written for Esquire, New York Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Playboy, Slate, Vice, and many other publications. He is the author of Welcome to Hell World: Dispatches from the American Dystopia.

I want to swallow all the days ahead at once

Its March and I am a child who knows nothing and you are a child who knows nothing except that we can feel something moving in the basement and we know not to go down there. It's August and we're huddled in a besieged grocery store as terrific insects hurl themselves against the glass wearing the faces of our loved ones bearing invitations to playdates and barbecues.

It's March and I am a child who knows nothing and the idea of being isolated at home and unable to see anyone for weeks more never mind months more seems so suffocating that if I let myself envision it I feel like I'm going to collapse. Instead what I try to do is think about it one day at a time as the folks in the famous secret program which I probably will need to join after this is all over like to say. You don't have to survive and wait out the entirety of this thing all at once right now all you have to do is make it through today I told people back then when I was a child. Tomorrow will probably be the same shit and the day after that too but tomorrow isn't your problem at the moment I said but children like me are very famously idiots.

It's April and we've just moved into our new home and after over a month of quarantine I don't know if I can take my own advice from way back in March anymore. I want to swallow all the days ahead at once right now in one disgusting gulp like I'm trying to hide evidence from the police or like I'm trying to smuggle the duration of the virus onto an airplane and then I take a restless nap on the plane and shit it out after and hand it off to someone else so it’s not my problem anymore. The relief when it's no longer in your possession. I want to come out the other side. I want to get to the part where we're all like What the fuck was that all about? then we all go get egg sausage and cheese on an English muffin at Dunkins and eat them silently and very fast in a bustling unworried crowd of people whose eyes don't have poison inside of them.

It's August and I don't particularly care what happens anymore or about the passage of time in general. Soon Michelle will be forced into returning to school to teach a roomful of children how not to die instead of how to do multiplication but no one in charge has of yet provided her with that particular curriculum.

Photo courtesy the author space after caption Luke O'Neil has written for Esquire, New York Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Playboy, Slate, Vice, and many other publications. He is the author of Welcome to Hell World: Dispatches from the American Dystopia.

I want to swallow all the days ahead at once

Its March and I am a child who knows nothing and you are a child who knows nothing except that we can feel something moving in the basement and we know not to go down there. It's August and we're huddled in a besieged grocery store as terrific insects hurl themselves against the glass wearing the faces of our loved ones bearing invitations to playdates and barbecues.

It's March and I am a child who knows nothing and the idea of being isolated at home and unable to see anyone for weeks more never mind months more seems so suffocating that if I let myself envision it I feel like I'm going to collapse. Instead what I try to do is think about it one day at a time as the folks in the famous secret program which I probably will need to join after this is all over like to say. You don't have to survive and wait out the entirety of this thing all at once right now all you have to do is make it through today I told people back then when I was a child. Tomorrow will probably be the same shit and the day after that too but tomorrow isn't your problem at the moment I said but children like me are very famously idiots.

It's April and we've just moved into our new home and after over a month of quarantine I don't know if I can take my own advice from way back in March anymore. I want to swallow all the days ahead at once right now in one disgusting gulp like I'm trying to hide evidence from the police or like I'm trying to smuggle the duration of the virus onto an airplane and then I take a restless nap on the plane and shit it out after and hand it off to someone else so it’s not my problem anymore. The relief when it's no longer in your possession. I want to come out the other side. I want to get to the part where we're all like What the fuck was that all about? then we all go get egg sausage and cheese on an English muffin at Dunkins and eat them silently and very fast in a bustling unworried crowd of people whose eyes don't have poison inside of them.

It's August and I don't particularly care what happens anymore or about the passage of time in general. Soon Michelle will be forced into returning to school to teach a roomful of children how not to die instead of how to do multiplication but no one in charge has of yet provided her with that particular curriculum.