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Melissa Frias

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wash your hands while you sing the abc’s, then count to three with mississippis in between to make sure you’ve been scrubbing for twenty seconds, and leave those shoes at the door with the plastic bin of things that can’t be disinfected, because you can’t imagine cleaning anything else with the spray your mom made, the one with the recipe she either remembers from the island or youtube, the one that settles under your nails and makes you gag, so now your oreos taste tart when you bring them to your lips, but you add that to the list of things you ignore for now, along with the time cdc says it takes to develop a vaccine, and the fact that your supermarket doesn’t limit how many people can enter at once, and your mom’s tu no va caber por la puerta cuando esta cuarentena termine, and how you noticed that guy in your class just stopped joining the zoom calls that one week death tolls were really high, but your professor still calls his name when he takes attendance, and that one monday when he asked if any of us have heard from that boy, but we shook our heads no — none of us brave enough to unmute ourselves to say we never exchanged numbers, but you’re sure he’s fine because if he wasn’t, you’d surely hear about it; so you wash your hands and reach z twice for good measure, and close your eyes while you wait to be dragged by your toes into november when this will all – please god – be over.

Melissa Frias is a Washington Heights native, studying Childhood Education and Creative Writing at The City College of New York. Melissa is a book hoarder and a lover of marginalized voices in literature. @mel_frias