With bare fingers I press trenches into the cool soil and try not to think about death. The seed packet says the ideal planting depth is half an inch. Two gardening camps exist in the Pacific Northwest: one insists April is too cold to direct-sow; the other shrugs. Struggle makes plants hardier. This year, I joined the second.

Desperation is the mother of daring. When produce shelves went bare and plant nurseries closed and online seed suppliers sold out, I phoned a friend. I didn’t care that it was April, that I had never grown from seed. She snail-mailed me four packets: radishes, lettuce, kale, and marigolds, my mother’s favorite.

I prayed over bare earth for weeks. Would the weak spring sunlight be enough? After college, I had trouble affording food, but this was the first time food was unavailable. A neighbor gifted me eight onion starts—I’d never grown onions, either—and three anemic tomato babies, which I set tenderly in the raised bed on the southern face of our house. My husband, Michael, watching from the window, called this our victory garden.

This spring, I dreamt about the time a waitress slid a cup of coffee to me across the table. She stopped short, Oh shoot, realizing she forgot the silver pitcher of cream. She lay her hand on my shoulder, Hon, I’ll be right back, her warmth soaking through my cotton T-shirt to the skin. Humanity in a simple gesture that’s impossible now.

I remember when we used to shake hands in greeting. When we elbow-bumped during cold-and-flu season. When we weren’t detectives, pondering the chain of transmission. When aerosol meant hairspray, not breath or contagion. When our ungloved fingers turned door knobs, pulled gas pumps, clung to metal poles on braking trains and busses. There’s little to steady ourselves with anymore.

I remember the foggy forever-ago morning in yoga class when our teacher said, “Let your leg fall open to the right.” Mine craned over the body of a red-headed woman, my unshaven knee kissing hers. To my left, a gray-haired lady swept her leg over mine. The shark-flesh of our shins, scratch on scratch, made a Velcro sound. Rather than retract, apologetic and embarrassed, we tittered. Three prickly, tickling witches giggling.

That Saturday I ordered a latte without knowing it was my last. I didn’t worry about germs. Didn’t scrub my skin with soap for twenty seconds after taking the cup, bare-handed, from the barista—the sweet one, pixie-ish, with a brown mullet—the one who recommended creamy vegan eyeshadow by Milk after I complimented the swath of iridescent blue lining her lids. Our fingers brushed in passing, warmth of body heat exchanged. I thanked her, sipped from the paper rim, and waved goodbye, thinking I’d see her again.

In the past, my garden was a hobby; in 2020, I am growing food. I can’t hug friends, but I can conjure life from the ground. The garden gives me purpose. I delight in each crowning cotyledon, the beginning twin leaves that foretell a future plant. Michael said I overdid it (what’s new?) when my seed order finally arrived in June: dill, basil, kale, cauliflower, carrots, peas, cucumbers, beets, radishes, fennel, leeks, parsnips, scallions, spinach. Too much for too few beds, but I couldn’t assume anything would take root.

The taproot of human is humus; we are people of the loam. Our bodies slough cells the ground devours; new life springs from our ashes. Earth. Humus. Humorous. How I thirst for conversation around a dinner table IRL, the golden liquor of friendship charging through the xylem of my veins. How I long to drink in my friends, to feed them with my touch the way compost nourishes my garden.

For social creatures, solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment, yet that’s what the American dream has achieved: from a community, we’ve dwindled into individuals. It takes bare store shelves before we wince at thoughts of fellow humans bending over in fields, backs aching, plunging their hands into the earth. It takes our food being threatened to admit we depend on strangers’ labor, to worry about their wellbeing because ours is entwined. A few hours in the garden makes my back pulse with ache. I swallow tablets of ibuprofen and whisper thanks to people I will never meet who grow everything I can’t, which is pretty much everything. 

We call it social distance, standing six feet apart, sheltering in homes, sheltering in poems and on screens, but it’s physical distance. Social distance is the strangeness that’s been growing between us like weeds. Strange that isolation has revealed this silent infiltration. We peer at pixelated friends and family, aching to graze their digital approximations, unreachable and immune. We sigh, I love you, I miss you, I cannot wait to _____ again, not knowing when or if again will arrive. How are you? triggers awkward pauses. No one knows. We say, This, too, will change, but can’t imagine how. Life is a dream, and not a pleasant one.

On Zoom, there’s no procession or arrival, no small talk or mingling. No crowds in which to linger, to fall in love, to spy or dodge a long-lost friend. At the end of events, we waggle jazz hands and promptly disappear, a Brady Bunch grid diminishing, face by face, to nothing. The red button lets us Leave too easily, lets us Exit, lets us End Meeting for All. These abrupt comings and goings are disorienting to the human mind. Our bodies’ building blocks—oxygen and carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen, calcium and phosphorus—don’t magically appear, as lettuce doesn’t spontaneously sprout on store shelves. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, but recycled. One life feeds others—we are interconnected on a cellular level to everything—which is why it physically pains us to see each other but not touch.

Our skin holds memory. Our atoms recognize each other. We are tendrils extending from ancient seeds, green cotyledons searching for sun. We curl and clutch at each other like pea vines; we need support to flower. Quarantine reveals how cut-off we’ve become, yet even a blocked human heart holds intelligence. A blocked human heart knows to grow collateral arteries, to make tendrils of new, secret skin. In quarantine, we are each a blocked human heart, a fist-sized muscle longing to breathe. 

Now that we’re apart, we cannot wait to touch.

In the garden, I clutch onions by their grassy goosenecks. I shrink away from humans and incline instead toward heads of lettuce and radicchio. I lay my hands on the sunburnt shoulders of carrots and beets, savor the umami of dirt impregnating their skin. I am learning the lost language of my ancestors who grew their own food, finding wisdom in the humus. Their trace chemicals complete me: potassium and sulfur, sodium and chlorine, magnesium. Scientists say mycobacteria in soil stimulate serotonin production, which is why humus makes humans feel happy. I say it’s because we’re reconnecting with the stardust, the people dust, from whence we came. We find our humanity in the earth. Now is when we need it most.

I never thought I’d miss the brush of a stranger’s body against mine on a crowded sidewalk. Oh, to bang and collide! To smack and thwack—to thump, tap, jolt, shake, bounce, and encounter! In nine months, incidental touch has become an exhibit in the museum of extinct experiences. Bumping is over; jostling and crashing are likewise canceled. I cross to the opposite side of the street when I see other walkers, imaging Pig Pen clouds of aerosol surrounding them.

On Zoom, I give toddleresque applause and wave enthusiastically (Hello!!!). It’s embarrassing: I’ve revived the thumbs-up for effect. I used to blame technology for social distance; now, it’s the only safe link, unsatisfying as it is. Physical touch is the screen we keep refreshing, hoping for an update, the forbidden fruit we’re longing to bite.

Who knew March 12 was my last opportunity for hugs? That day, Michael’s heart stopped for eight hours while a surgical team plunged gloved hands inside the loam of his chest, sewing segments of vein harvested from his leg into his heart, bypassing five arterial blockages. The collateral arteries his heart grew—homemade bypasses—weren’t enough, like how what I grow in my garden is not enough. They replaced Michael’s aortic valve with one taken from a pig or sheep, we don’t know which. While I waited for an update on Michael’s condition, a friend pressed me to her chest in a tiny windowless room where we sat, unmasked. 

“We shouldn’t do this,” I protested. 

“Of course we should,” she said.

That night, as the pandemic descended, the surgeon suspected Michael was bleeding internally based on the voluminous beet-red liquor surging from his chest drains. “We’re going to have to open him up again,” the surgeon said. He advised me to go home. “There’s nothing you can do,” he assured me—and, anyway, I would not be able to see Michael (even if he survives, the unspoken coda). I couldn’t tell tears from raindrops on the windshield driving home. I did useless things to pass the hours. Lit candles. Prayed. Bargained. After nine p.m., my phone rang. I hesitated to answer, afraid of the life that awaited on the other side. 

“Michael survived,” the surgeon said. “It was just a wire giving him grief.” 

Because he told me what I wanted to hear, I had trouble believing him.

That night, the hospital closed to visitors due to surging cases of coronavirus. In the morning, I phoned for word of Michael’s condition. How I ached to touch him, to smell the aroma at the nape of his neck. His voice was hoarse from intubation, distant from anesthesia, from trauma he still cannot talk about, which he faced—alone. Five days later, Michael emerged from the hospital weak as a newborn kitten. I lay the red heart-shaped plush pillow, autographed by the surgeon, over his chest and strapped him into the passenger seat like I was his mother. I couldn’t believe he was mine to keep. My mother died of cancer when I was sixteen. Since then, I’ve feared the few people I dare to love aren’t mine to keep. 

At home, Michael unzipped his hoodie to reveal a purple pump taped to his chest. The pump sucked air from the gash forged open—twice—by the surgeon. Whoosh-click, whoosh-click. The pump spit clear phloem into a reservoir. The latest in wound care, the nurse had gushed. I lay my hands on his shoulders, which now curved inward, his body cowering from the memory of harm. 

I set up Michael in the guest bedroom; I was afraid of jostling him in my sleep. I came in to say goodnight, curling my body around his, making a double-quote mark. Oh, the carefree days of dating, when we could bump and collide, when we hugged, chest to chest—this was no longer possible. He shuddered as my lips kissed the bare skin of his back, salted with my tears. Our cells exchanged an unnameable grief, a bolus of anguish, a burst of Why?! 

Suddenly, I was burning up. My chest felt tight; I couldn’t breathe. Was I having a heart attack? My stomach lurched. I pulled away and slid to the floor, onto my knees, and left him crying in the dark. I was suffocating from heat. I crawled down the hall, sweat dripping from my forehead, afraid of barfing on the carpet. Along the way, I stripped off my socks, my sweatshirt, my T-shirt, my sweatpants, my last thought: Is this the virus?! My vision narrowed—a wave hit me from behind. My guilt: what a relief to collapse, to drown. To let undertow suck me into an oubliette in which I did not dream. I woke, shivering, at 3 a.m., naked except for underwear, sprawled over the threshold of the bathroom, my skin dewy as spring dirt.

Michael’s cardiologist told us to avoid the grocery store; we haven’t been since March. When the flowers started coming up, I made bouquets for the people who delivered our food. I trimmed dahlias from the thick, juicy stalks, hoping our shoppers would want them—I mean, I hoped they wouldn’t be afraid to take them—I mean, I hoped they would accept the only gratitude my hands could give. Dahlias became my mouth. Flowers convey thanks—at least, they used to, didn’t they?

This summer, I plunged my hands into the sunbaked loam, easing life from the soil: Bull’s Blood beets, crimson radicchio heads, pink gumball radishes. I shook off the cells of my ancestors and wondered, Can I sustain us with this? Emerald cucumbers swelled thick on my vines, but one cuke, one lettuce head every few days—it was never enough. 

This summer, I gave into loneliness and met a friend for a walk on an urban trail, both of us masked. No one else was. We lamented how we can no longer predict anything, how we’ve lost the illusion of control. When we bumped elbows, glee spurted from my heart—oh, sweet transgression! Neither of us acknowledged it. When it happened again, our arms lingered against each other, a sign she welcomed it, too. Oh to bump and collide! Our body heat exchanged where her elbow met mine: nothing short of delicious. 

Confession: I cried in my car afterward. These days, I cry for anything.

In September, I had my first mask dream. Michael and I were waiting for a table in a crowded restaurant—too many people gathered indoors unmasked—why were we eating out? I waved for the host’s attention, my hand flapping like a spooked pigeon. Excuse me, I’m sorry, but no one’s wearing masks! The host rolled his eyes. We don’t do that here. I hissed in Michael’s ear, We’re in trouble. We have to get out of here. Where are our masks?! He held up a crumpled swath of cotton by the ear strings and said, I lost mine, so I took yours. 

In September, the dahlias were booming: orange bon-bons, winking pink pinwheels, purple dinnerplates, creamy café au lait—the same shade as the last latte I drank. The delivery app displayed our shopper’s name: Anna. I addressed a note and tucked it in with the dahlias. A crunch of gravel announced her arrival in our driveway. From the window, I waved (Hello!!!), noting the resemblance: my mother’s dark brown hair, curvy hips, light olive skin. Her mom jeans. It’s been thirty years since we’ve touched. She was forty-five when tumors bloomed from sloughed cells fallen in the folds of her brain—thousands of grains, black chips of chive seeds—a homegrown corruption that spread stealthily from her breast to choke the garden of her mind. I worry this is my fate, too.

It’s painfully obvious, now, how dependent humans are on each other. How we are all each other’s mothers, an invisible umbilical linking our survival and demise. If there is a normal again, will we fall back to being oblivious to this?

After setting down four bags of food, Anna takes the bouquet, to my delight. I watch her return to her car, idle inside, dash to our door, dash back. After she drives away, I emerge, masked. They say aerosol lingers for hours. Amongst our food, Anna left a note. She kept my message, tore the paper in half and, from the remainder, made hers. Thank you so much for the flowers, she wrote. It made my day! You have a beautiful garden. 

Tears welled in my eyes. Seriously, everything makes me cry now. Even acts of common decency which are less  common these days. It makes me sad, how thirsty I am for kindnesses I would’ve ignored before the pandemic—or, should I feel glad to feel something?

While I drink in Anna’s words, the picture she drew of my flowers, I do not consider germs. I hold her heart in my hands. Warmth passes through my mother’s thin cotton hospital gown, her hands squeezing my shoulders, my head on her chest. I unpack the groceries, wash them with soapy water, ponder the chain of transmission. My great-grandmother, Giuseppina, her thick hands calloused with labor, taught my grandmother, Rose, to garden. Grandma taught my mother to grow lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and flowers: American Beauty roses and French marigolds. I am the last link in our family’s chain, the end of the line.

The heartbreak of the first orange leaf falls in early October. Part, Oh no, please not yet; part, Oh phew, we still have time. Plants are the only things I can touch, clutch, consume. I can’t lose them yet. I secure a cloche around the raised beds, a plastic hero’s cape. My yoga teacher, via Zoom, welcomes autumn with balance poses. She says it’s Vata season, wind season, blowing us off-kilter. “Can you refrain from bracing and hardening?” she says. “Can you accept wavering  and stay present? Can you let go of perfection and tumble with acceptance—even joy?” 

I teeter in tree pose, feeling my colors turn, and wonder, Can I?

In the garden, I plunge my hands into the soil to distract myself. I try not to worry when Michael rubs his chest, when his harvest leg swells and aches. He naps deeply every afternoon, which I tell myself is normal for a healing body, not a sign he’s winding down. He sighs, I’ll never be strong like I was, which sounds like giving up and I get angry at him. I stay outside though the skies dim at 4 p.m. in late November. I can’t go in; my work isn’t done. I clip lily stalks, withered yellow, and dahlias brittled brown until my heart breaks. I say I’ll appreciate the garden more than usual next year, that there’s much to look forward to, but—

I am forty-six; Michael is sixty-four. 

Is it crazy that I long for my mother thirty years after her death? I no longer remember the sound of her voice, but I listen for her counsel: is it normal to feel this alone? Is it possible to feel joy without fearing cosmic retribution? If I lose everything tomorrow will I look back on today as the last good day? My fingers wriggle in the soil, grasping for answers, growing collaterals, yearning for her intelligence, long withered. Michael says things about accepting aging and death that I don’t want to hear. It makes me wonder where the hell hope comes from. They say Joan Mitchell chose her pigments for their intensity rather than their durability, and if that doesn’t describe how the human heart loves, I don’t know what does.

My entrance to this world came two weeks late—feet-first, breech—No, I don’t want to exit, please not yet, don’t end this meeting for all. I was curled up safe, a sprouted seed in my mother’s belly, my ankles rudely grasped by the surgeon who plucked me out, beet-red and crying. Oh shoot. Sorry, hon. In hospital pictures of us, Mom liked to note the roundness of my skull, my rosebud lips—she was proud that her pain created something beautiful. My exit scarred her, iliac crest to iliac crest, like the jagged pink line splitting Michael’s chest, which he will not permit me to touch, even nine months later. Too sensitive, he says, curling inside himself. I don’t say it, but I know the location and shape my scar will take when he ends this meeting for all.

He shudders when I whisper, I want to curl up inside you. What I mean is, he feels like home. What I mean is, no matter how physically close we are, it’s never close enough. I’m bracing though I’m trying not to. What I mean is, Please stay. I want to hang onto what we’ve cultivated—it’s too soon to accept the fall. What I mean is, despite knowing everything ends, that it’s natural for fields to fall fallow, for us to become dust, I demand a longer growing season.

It’s been a year since we’ve made love; I feel brittle and bone-dry as leaves. It’s embarrassing to admit we made plans for sex this past spring—we planned to do it with abandon on vacation in New Zealand when we both felt relaxed—plans canceled by Michael’s surgery then canceled again by coronavirus. Our abstinence has become a shield, a vigil, but I want to know: is sex over for the rest of my life? When I bring it up, Michael says it’s still too soon, he has too much on his mind with the pandemic and the pressure of work. He’s afraid of having a heart attack—a little death summoning a big death—to which I have no rejoinder. I’m afraid of killing him, too. All the time. I let him hold me hostage, using fear to maintain distance between us. I understand: to be touched after what he’s been through is terrifying. His skin on mine, inside mine, will remind him there’s something left to lose. I say I’m honoring his feelings, respecting his space, but the truth is, I’m hiding like a child. If I shut my eyes, you can’t see me; if I can’t see you, neither of us can die.

The truth is, I’m afraid of life after quarantine. Will I wake up and realize, like the season finale of Dallas, this was all a dream? That I imagined the surgeon’s call—that Michael didn’t survive? That everything is normal, hard, and bright, and I’m expected to go on living? There’s a cockeyed comfort in isolation: our bubble of two, two bubbles of one. I’ve retreated so far inside that I, too, am shy to touch. Purgatory is protection, a cozy Stockholm syndrome. If I huddle here quietly, nothing will change; also, nothing bad will happen. I choose the blue pill, the illusion that affords us time. I want to believe I won’t waste it, but that’s not how limbo works.

In dreams I plunge my hand into the earth, feeling for my mother. My fingers meet hers, warm and alive. It’s not a fiction but a reversal, Ceres for Persephone. She has preceded my descent into the earth; she waits, snacking on pomegranate seeds. I crawl in after her, pull the cover of soil over, brush back her soft, brown curls, entwine my body with hers. I bury my face in her neck where her skin smells like home and close my eyes. She wraps her arms around me and squeezes, which means I’ll take care of it and everything will be alright. Her touch is more than delicious. It subverts every law. We shouldn’t do this, I whisper. Of course we should, she says. I’m so close to recalling her voice, a register similar to mine. She whispers, Hon I’ll be right back—

My body begins to rouse. I claw at the threshold between this world and the next—No, please not yet—and waver, knowing she can’t, she won’t, not ever pass between. But, someday, I will.