“The Tea Tastes Different This Morning”- a Covid-19 Collaborative Poem
created by: Chloe Johnston (17) — Joy Mathebula (17) — Maera Klein (16)
image by: Francesca McConnell
For this piece, we asked around fifty participants to create work relating to the COVID-19 pandemic over the course of 24 hours, between March 20th and March 21st, 2020. After each individual piece of writing was submitted, we read and pulled our favorite lines from every single one, with the intention of creating one collective poem that reflects the unified experience of shelter in place. Now, more than a month later, it’s interesting to reflect on how our lives and experiences within the lockdown have changed and largely remained the same.
The format of this poem represents both the stages of illness and the stages of grief. It follows the cycles of human nature, the cyclical presence of COVID-19 symptoms in an individual, and the symptomatic response of the world. We had all the time in the world, thanks to quarantine, and we felt the need to channel our energy into something productive. Art as a collaborative process has helped us motivate one another to stay creative in bleak times.
This is a love letter to the people who helped create it. We could not be more grateful for their contributions.
We are in a time that our children will learn about and wonder, how could this have been? What can we say that we did during times where everything is unsure? Will we have stories to tell them?
We know now that we will.
★
I. cough | denial
the tea tastes different this morning.
my mother tells me we’ve run out of leaves
the things we had in abundance
have suddenly disappeared
cleaning supplies. stocks of food.
rationality.
love.
in a world uninfected, untouched
my mother buys ten boxes from every girl scout
who comes by the grocery store
(the land of things you can waste)
as i left, i told my friends, “i’ll see you in april, i guess!”
i had a dream last night
(before the whole thing hit the fan)
that i would go back to a
point in my childhood
enjoy all the things i love one last time
a bright-eyed child spinning in the water that pooled
in the potholes on her street.
(i will not be seeing them in april.)
tonight i dreamed i was licking blue paint off of my walls
it looked like water through the glitter in my eyes
i wake up to soft blankets and soft lights when
my mother sends me a selfie in a N-95 mask and a hazmat suit
maybe i am living in a fever dream where,
quite unexpectedly,
Time stops.
we might be here for a while.
II. fatigue | bargaining
i am not religious i do not pray i do not kneel
but yesterday i pressed my hands together
wailing like an animal to the puppeteer upstairs
mother nature is my god, of some sorts
“do you think it’s possible to miss something
you’ve only seen once?” i ask her.
“when Time stops the way it has,
are we just Their strange sort of permanent visitors?”
“how are we to escape one plague
and then another, again and again?”
“they tell you to stay at home
but what if home is your family
and your family is spread out and scattered?”
“to be honest i don’t know and no one does, and that’s the hardest part of all of this.”
the world and i are
in quarantine for one another
closetheblindsandsitonthecouch routine
with this newly granted time
we’re forced to give up space.
III. fever | anger
i am realizing all our capacity to hurt.
so if you would prefer to wait
and be a holder-outer
an in-the-crowder
a you’re-too-louder
to pass a bong shaped selfish sharing spit
you could be saviors on your asses
doing literal jack shit
redefine taking my breath away
i’m too scared to breathe in anyway
take away my perception of reality
replace it with white wall after white wall
the shape of isolation.
i don’t know how to fight something i can’t see
the days upon days upon days
repeat isolating, contact null
repetition is grief is repetition is not humanity
it is the unmaking of all
across these spider silk weeks
our purgatory takes more than the seven days of creation
a thought: corona means crown in latin,
but it is the common who must wear it
it is not a hoax a vacation a joke
so i wait for the feast to cease to work its jaw
for those in power to relinquish the throne
and chase responsibility, run
towards the planned safe tree named sacrifice
do they dare be mad?
we remember what it’s like to be weak
weak to dream of growing strong
or just to dream of going home
have this throne yell at us to
“just remember how thankful you are!”
i think i’m a nihilist now.
(i have been for a long time.)
IV. suffocation | depression
in this world
there is a sinister purity (sanitation, say)
between the numbered days that came before
and the chasm of time ahead
there is an extended radio silence
of the things left unresolved
i thought the last time i saw myself
wouldn't need to be a moment i had to savor
but i watch the days hollow me out
the faint blue glow of my computer
slip under the door of the guest bedroom late at night
friends still laugh together, only with a tint of lag
just enough so that our mouths don’t quite sync up with our voices
i leave half eaten plates of food at the bottom of the sink
the cereal slowly disappears from the boxes
because emptiness drowns out the dread
i hide in the miniature pockets of women’s jeans
where no hand will reach to find me
maybe this is what it feels like
to be a houseplant sitting in a glass vase
i get a little sun from the window
but mostly it is gloomy and grey
there is occasional sound of running water
but i do not notice it pouring onto me
i never got the chance to say goodbye.
the letter i wrote to myself in kindergarten
with “open on your graduation day” written on the envelope
sits unopened on the kitchen counter
did anyone feel it all slipping away?
in this dark, unmarked expanse like the ocean
i think i have become an island
a solo jellyfish, bioluminescent and quivering
in this dark,
what has become of the love
strong enough to protect me
from the oncoming?
i once had a dream that stretched
from the lemon to the mulberry
workschoolgoleaveneverstoprushing
now the world has come to a stop.
and i have too. but i shouldn’t
closetheblindsandsitonthecouch
how do you forgive yourself for pausing?
the whole world has come to a stop and i should be moving forward
but creativity is just another commodity at costco
and all i do is stare at empty shelves
i know,
even god can’t take back lost opportunity.
it feels like shouting into oblivion
and panic is not a word i sit well with
i can’t fight it off with my strength alone
V. recovery | acceptance
my mother sets new tea leaves
on the counter next to the letter i wrote myself
“it’ll work.” she says.
“i promise.” she says.
“just remember how thankful you are, okay?”
we fall asleep in each other's arms
i dream of sunlight and pothole puddles
and other simple new impossibilities
i dream of when we emerge from closed doors
to a world so intertwined in its smallness
and we greet the neighbors we’ve never met
in wonder that the trouble used to be
i dream of taking hope out of the bottom drawer
and placing it below the window
because hope needs the sun to grow.
so next time the weight of the world hits us,
and the children ask what we did
in times of turbulence
we will say:
art. connection. love.
sacrifice.
The Minds and Meaning Behind the Collective:
★
Chloe Johnston (17) — When they shut down school for three weeks, the first emotion I felt was a sense of relief. Junior year was exhausting me, mentally and physically. As the days piled on and the situation outside of my San Diego bubble grew increasingly dire, I could feel anxiety knocking at my door, begging to be let in. Boredom, too, was creeping into my brain.
The global health crises — COVID-19, social distancing, quarantine — were suddenly all I could think about. I had locked out the world, but somehow fear and anxiety about the future was still infesting the air. Loneliness, fear, isolation: these emotions were just another viral illness that my friends and family were grappling with on a daily basis.
I needed an outlet, and I could tell a lot of my friends needed one too. What I called the “COVID-19 Collective” was then born: a 24-hour writing challenge from March 20 to 21, in which teens from across California (and a couple from out of state) would pour their feelings about the state of the world into a shared Google Drive folder. After soliciting emails from Instagram, enlisting help in the form of my fellow CSSSA alums Joy Mathebula and Maera Klein, and a lot of administrative setups, I was ready to go.
I had all the time in the world, thanks to quarantine, and I needed to channel my energy into something productive. All year, I had struggled with writing because it meant returning to a love I had left behind. Organizing this project and reading everyone’s work felt like coming home. That’s the thing about art — without collaboration, without someone to experience it, it can feel empty. And emptiness wasn’t something I was chasing. There’s already enough of it circling this crisis, enough of it bubbling within my own heart. What I was chasing was human connection.
This piece is an amalgamation of all 50+ pieces that Maera, Joy, and I received that weekend, with lines either taken directly from participants’ words, cut and pasted together, or created in the spirit of their incredible work. It follows the cycles of human nature and the cyclical presence of both COVID-19 symptoms in an individual and the symptomatic response of the world.
But most of all, it is a love letter to the people who helped create it. In this time of isolation, this collaboration was my gift to them and to myself — a promise that you can always find your way home, even when that home is scattered across the world. It’s a promise that even in dark times, humanity can come together and create light.
much love — chloe
★
Joy Mathebula (17) — I can’t lie and say that my life shut down the day we were told to stay inside. I know there are people in this world whose situations are much more difficult than mine at this moment. People in my family are not exhibiting symptoms of the virus. I live in a home with a loving mother, enough food, internet for my online classes, and the ability to do the things I must do to feel healthy. Mainly, for me, that means writing.
But I will tell you that life has changed for more people than I can fathom in this world. My personal goal in life is to be able to help provide the platform for people with fewer privileges in any given situation a voice to both represent themselves and feel safe expressing their emotions. I know that in many situations, I wish someone would have done the same for me.
The collective allowed everyone to use the most important tool they have: their voices. I could not be more proud.
We are in a time that our children will learn about and wonder, how could this have been? What can we say that we did during times where everything is unsure? Will we have stories to tell them?
I know now that we will.
light + power — Joy
★
Maera Klein (16) — Over the course of the past few weeks I’ve watched my normal routines grind to a halt, cancelled plans causing a multitude of creative projects I’d been working for all year to suddenly vanish. Consequently, I found myself sitting with virtually unlimited time to make new art, something I’d (perhaps naïvely) always wished for. But in the atmosphere of a global pandemic, motivation’s been hard to muster. When Chloe brought up the idea of a writing collective, I realized a deadline and a collaborative team were just what I had been so desperately needing.
As I sifted through our brimming Google Drive folders, I found poignant relatability in each and every submission. The knowledge that other people felt all the things I’ve been feeling too comforted me, and made the isolation seem a little more bearable. I hope whoever stumbles upon this is also comforted that we’re all in this together, in the same boat meandering through uncharted waters, no matter how far apart we physically may be. And I hope that, once we return to solid ground, we’ll feel a bit closer together even than before we departed.
many <3s — Maera