Q

 Sixteen months in,
 well, I still work 
 from my basement,
 that deep part 
 of the home,
 submerged in earth, 
 indelibly cool window
 opening itself 
 to the promise 
 of midmorning light,
 disappointed 
 by another gray day.
 I notice my desk, 
 cheap finish fading
 where dry elbows have
 sanded away edges,
 tense hands stretched 
 too often to the keyboard,
 now missing 
 the letter Q. 
 There’s a hole
 where the character
 once was, 
 orderliness left 
 gap toothed, grimacing
 between Tab
 and W. Odd 
 I didn’t notice
 until now.
 Maybe I hadn’t
 needed it?
 I guess it’s okay. 
 I must not have used it
 (much, anyway),
 and with so many words
 to come up with,
 no one could have 
 realized it was gone. 
 I’ll just work around 
 the Q, choose
 different diction,
 look to the thesaurus
 or alternate spelling,
 justify omitting it,
 because why can’t
 kuestion or kuarantine 
 serve as well
 as anything else
 the pandemic dragged in?
 See, if C were missing,
 we’d be a bit screwed. 
 Coronavirus.
 Covid.
 Vaccine. 
 How to cash
 that stimulus check,
 or video conference
 on a PC or Mac.
 But Q? 
 No, we can navigate
 some letters’
 coming loose,
 snapping off
 from the erosion
 of office hours.
 We can 
 lower the shade
 if we don’t like the weather, 
 slam the door
 when the world gets too loud,
 replace the chair
 warped with the weight
 of our labor,
 buff the desktop 
 scuffed by pen marks. 
 The Q is the least
 of our problems.
 Who else
 has disappeared?
  
 -Katherine Gotthardt