Four Sided

Haven

When I first read about the virus, I did not consider my own mortality at all. I was and remain: not that young but not that old, healthy and full of American exceptionalism. First it hovered on the horizon, an oddity overseas, outside my universe. Then, it crept in like phlox and then it was everywhere and everything was fundamentally changed.
You know: you were there.

Like many other low income queers, I had the very particular experience of navigating living with housemates rather than family or a partner when the lockdown went into effect. In April, my housemate Haven and I started taking bike rides together. Haven hadn't biked in years, and I set them up on the FUJI, while I took my road bike, a silver Raleigh ten-speed. I adjustee the seat a bit for them and had them ride up and down the alley once to practice braking and turning before we took our bikes out into the street. We biked to Minnehaha creek and the Mississippi River. We rode the wide, luxurious bike lanes downtown and then along the park and up the hill next to the Walker Art Museum where Haven sang Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" in their rich, warm baritone while we lay in the grass. Those joyful moments felt as though the nightmare of the pandemic was paused: around them we created a small, tender routines for a little while. We would wrap up our last calls of the day and close our laptops and ride our bikes in gentle loops around the city. It was such a pleasure to share one of my greatest pleasures with one of my favorite people.

Then, one afternoon, Haven's cousin called from Detroit with the news Haven's mom had contracted the virus. We wept. Then Haven's father contracted the virus. We wept. First their father and then their mother were incapacitated by it. Haven packed the car to go to Detroit to care for their grandmother while their parents were in the hospital. I chopped, seasoned, and roasted sweet potatoes, packed them with alongside chicken and greens for the road. The next day I got up at before dawn to help Haven pack and get ready for the long drive. The moon, just full, shone down on us as we embraced. I held them close, their tall, strong body light in my arms. I didn't cry. I felt like I was sending them into war. Mortality rates in Detroit were grim, and the journey back home loomed nightmarishly in my psyche.

Within a week, Haven's father had become an ancestor. It's not my story to tell. I burned sweet-grass every morning, and took deep breaths.