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August & September 2020 The three of us—Patrick, me, and our friend Jake—piled into my car for an Ohio road trip. It was early August. I sat in the backseat, the guys in the front. Patrick drove while Jake and I took turns playing music. “God, it just feels good to be going somewhere,” Jake … Continue reading Plague Diary, Part 5: “Are You Ready?”
I walked through the wide-open side door and climbed the steps to the upstairs half of a slightly scrummy duplex in one of Cleveland’s west side suburbs. It was the end of May, and my sister-in-law, Margaret, was turning twenty-two. Margaret greeted me and ushered me through the kitchen into the rest of the house, … Continue reading A Profile of Margaret : “I’m Not Really a Mess”
April 24, 2020 I sit in my car, parked in the middle of the bustling grocery store parking lot. I’m trying to gather the motivation to actually get out of the car and walk into the building, grab a sanitized cart, follow arrow stickers on the floor through a maze of one-way aisles crowded with … Continue reading Plague Diary, Part 4: “Don’t call me at home, ’cause I won’t be there.”
April 10, 2020 The first couple weeks of quarantine, I went out in the woods every day. This isn’t something specific to the pandemic; whenever it’s warm, I walk the parkway path to a patch of woods and murky creek near my house. I track deer, sometimes working my way close to the group of … Continue reading Plague Diary, Part 2: “Don’t come crying to me for any fish”
April 3, 2020 “You look like you’re in some future cyberpunk gang.” I am dressed in black jeans and a black hoodie, an oversized flannel jacket, and a pair of Docs caked in Cuyahoga mud. My hair is uncombed and dip-dyed a hue that I swear is blue but that my husband, Patrick, says looks … Continue reading Plague Diary, Part 1: “I hate this timeline”
Hannah Williams 