Death loomed large during those desolate days.

The thinnest of veneers was the only thing keeping us in check and it was cracking fast. 

Through the broken window of his soul she slipped in to steal everything inside him. 

Their paradigms for paradise didn't include outcasts like me, he thought, looking at all their shiny clean smiling faces with toothpaste ad teeth.  

Portland was a preview of coming attractions. 

Her longings no longer needed fulfillment from without. 

We'd become pariahs with our pandemic-infested spittle sputtering fascist fantasies about "fake news."

It can't happen here (until it does). 

Words could be a snare or salvation. 

They turned coincidence and chance into a conspiracy to bolster their twisted beliefs. 

The sunflower loomed over the doorway, both a greeter and a guard. 

A misinterpreted move was a trifle or a death sentence, depending on your color. 

Treason and obstruction and nepotism only counted for the "other" people, we soon learned. 

The only drama she wanted in her life came from nature—light shimmering off the water's surface, sunbeams breaking through clouds, a bright pasture of clover with a backdrop of shadowed forest. 

Our minds could only contemplate one disaster at a time. 

Social media was the modern vanitas. 

We were all slowly losing the ability to understand each other.  

Time doesn't seem to pass until you see what passed for fashion in the past. 

They heard a lone voice crying out in the wilderness and accompanied it until the chorus carried across the land and drowned out the lies. 

Everyone has a story to tell. 

Prophets, poets, and thieves knew the one eternal truth: impermanence. 

The tearing of the paper-thin veil revealed hidden hatreds that could (hopefully) now begin to be dealt with. 

All she wanted was to soak in a nice warm bath (of the blood of her enemies). 

He was a reflection of our worst tribalistic instincts. 

A soft hissssssssssss was the only lead up to the chaos that ensued. 

The soul's darkness was like a fog in which you could easily get lost but that was as comforting as a lover's embrace. 

The past—the rose-colored white-bread version and the brutal, violent, hate-filled reality (both equally venomous)—still haunted America like a hacking cancerous cough that we pretended was just a tickle in the throat.

I saw their tears by the light of the fireworks. 

When would they realize innocence and emotionality weren't weaknesses but the deepest of virtues? 

Some days were big black holes that seemed to suck everything into the void. 

They got drunk in the graveyard and sang old Bauhaus songs and hoped their sadness-tinged love wouldn't die too soon.