By Katherine Gotthardt Somewhere in the midst of life’s lessons, I’m forgetting how to speak. I think it might be the COVID solitude, demanding silence and order and discipline, the daily tidying of a cluttered workspace I don’t want anyone to see. Or maybe it’s approaching winter, early morning frost telling us all to hush. Or it could be the intricate lacing of human beings gone lonely, so much so, we forget how to understand. Language breaks apart into the nearly obsolete, silent desperation clicking keyboards, tapping screens, substituting itself for communication. Take another sip of too-hot coffee and answer that nipping email, but thank God it’s not another video meeting. It’s not that they seem useless. We just don’t want to face the camera, log in to these other people, see ourselves avoid their eyes, have to watch them watch us while we muddle through what passes for sharing It’s worse in the office when we do go in, all of us defaulted to mute, tentatively taking ourselves off, turning hot and pink, perspiring in the awkward stutter of chipped conversation. Then suddenly we talk over each other, streaming words for dear life. The inappropriateness of it all piles in the center of the conference room table, complaints placed strategically atop gossip, strange craft practiced in loneliness. No one knew how much we’d depend on one another for such a seemingly simple function, verbal command of words having become a luxury. No one knew people tangled in frustration would turn into a lifeline, knotting themselves at the end of a thin cord, all of us strung like glass beads, feet atop hands and heads, hoping the braid will hold. We wonder when someone will say the wrong thing, and everyone else will slip and shatter. They ask me what I’m thinking. I answer, “All is well.”
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