The Days the Earth Stood Still

Remember when

We all knew one day we'd look back and say, Remember when Times Square was empty? 

Remember when the Taj Mahal, the Coliseum and the Louvre were empty? 

Remember when schools all over the world were empty? 

Remember when all the shopping malls were empty? 

Remember when we could walk on the streets like they were sidewalks because there were no cars? 

Remember when we stayed home for months, going out only for a walk or to get some groceries? 

Remember when we had all those empty hours to read, to meditate, to write our novels, to clean out the attic, to work on the garden, to fix the downstairs bathroom, to think about how life couldn't be like this all the time?

Remember how we hated it at first, all squirmy in our boredom, all jittery from the news? 

Remember how for those first weeks we couldn't concentrate on a damn thing?

Remember how we'd scroll through the news for hours, refreshing the page of statistics, watching the numbers increase by the minute? 

Remember how we went to the grocery store in a panic to stock up on necessities? 

Remember how spooky it was when the shelves were empty and we couldn't find any chicken noodle soup? 

Remember how the days went by in a haze, hours bleeding into each other and we'd lie down at night and wonder where the time had gone? 

Remember how after a while we stopped feeling squirmy and jittery and we stopped watching the news and we stopped going to the grocery store and we finally started reading those books, meditating, writing our novels, cleaning out the attic, working on the garden, fixing the downstairs bathroom, and thinking about why couldn't life be like this all the time? 

Remember the days the earth stood still?