COVID-19

Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘I never wanted to be here again’

I never wanted to be here ever again. I never wanted to give terrifying power to the words negative and positive again. I never wanted to feel that fear again when you heard a friend was positive, was isolating away, was not being seen, was frightened for their future. I never wanted to see doctors or nurses at a loss again. I never wanted to see a President turn his face away from all that was fact again. I never wanted to experience so much loss. I never wanted to be here again, but… here we are.
— Gary Garrison (Provincetown, Massachusetts)

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Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘The gaps feel smaller’

I call my new Indian friends on WhatsApp. We aren’t all busy like we said we would be, and we didn’t expect to still feel so close to each other. We anticipated distance after I finished my residency, but now we know where each other are; all sharing an experience – a common fear. I tell them about my walks, how I swapped peacocks for pheasants and vampire bats for buzzards, how I have to wear jumpers to go outside now. They laugh. We have different concerns, but we can all agree that it’s a good time for making art.
— Grace Gelder, Ironbridge, Shropshire, United Kingdom

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Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘What will the next generation say?’

We greet each other at the virtual Seder table – in turn, as the video chat allows.
“How are you? Who’s in New York?”
Four generations gather with food and wine, in celebration of our freedom as Jewish people.
An imperative that we continue imagining and building a world where all are free.
An imperative that we continue imagining and building a world where all are free.
We say, “Next year in Jerusalem,” nodding to the Israelities who wandered the desert for forty years after Moses led the liberation.
Now we say, “Next year in person.”
What will the next generation say?
— Julia Levine (New York, New York)

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Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘Medical tent in hospital parking lot’

Medical tent in hospital parking lot. Sprayed with sanitizer, given a mask, led to a tent. Doctor in hazmat suit, plastic face guard, riot gear: “We think you have COVID-19 but we don’t have tests.” I say: “My celebrity friend bought one: $3,000.” Nods. A secret back door, X-ray room covered in plastic. After, I stand outside tent, it’s windy in my paper gown. Doctor: “Hospital at home.” Hospital, a new verb. Stoplight next to Paramedic. Honk, gesture, “roll window down!” “What do you need lady?” “THANK YOU!” I shout. His face reconfigures into a grin.
— Jessica Litwak (Petaluma, California)

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Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘Care for the space between us’

I was walking on the grass, bored of the same path through the manicured wildness. I cut the corner and it surprised her—not a predictable trajectory. We went left and right, trying to anticipate the other. We bounced side to side for a brief while and I smiled, acknowledging the awkwardness, expressing gratitude for her care for the space between us. The tension broke, we found a way through and past and I wondered, as I walked on, what little or large stresses had made her face so hard until it broke into the warm smile that answered mine.
— Zosia Dowmunt (Cardiff, Wales)

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Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘Marooned midway, on a tiny island’

Borders snap shut ahead of me in Greenland and behind me in Svalbard. I find myself marooned midway, on a tiny island in the North Sea. Kindly locals let me stay in the lighthouse keeper’s quarters and ask me to self-isolate. I’m guessing the light’s former custodians would laugh at the imposition. Through the (now-automated) lantern’s fresnel lens the world is turned upside down. But there’s no sense of anything amiss, other than a sky curiously free of the usual trans-Atlantic contrails. I redraft my neglected PhD. Maybe Slow Travel is just what the doctor ordered?
— Adam Sébire (Utsira Lighthouse, Norway)

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Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘As long as she is there I cannot touch her’

Twenty-five days. It has been twenty-five days since I came home. Twenty-five days ago I came home to my mother, but I cannot hug her. She works in the hospital, the ER in fact. And as long as she is there I cannot touch her. She comes home in tears, exhausted, and fearful that she may infect us… and I cannot console her. I can only hope for the day I can hold her and she will know that it will be alright. Twenty-five more days and I may be able to hug her. But we must stay home.
— Iliana Ramon (Fairmont, Minnesota)

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Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘The third narrator is practicing her lines’

The narrator of my life insisted on saying, “And from that point on, everything went quickly down hill.”
She was replaced.
The second narrator insisted on saying, “One day and then the next, in dismal succession.”
She was replaced.
These narrators think they know everything! The third narrator is practicing her lines. She is learning to say, “We are staying at home. We are washing our hands. We are playing our part.”
— Karen Elias (Lock Haven, Pennsylvania)

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Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘The song of a blackbird emerges’

It’s Thursday. Is it Thursday? It IS Thursday. I have lived an entire day in an hour.
I stop to make a cup of tea. I fill the mug with hot water, watch the teabag drift aimlessly, imagine being cwtched on all sides, warm and safe as I float dreamlessly onwards.
When I look up, an entire afternoon has flung itself past my window.
Time is contracted and concertinaed and stretched beyond recognition, all at once.
From between the folds; the song of a blackbird emerges, unfurls. On and on it goes, until it fills the infinite void.
— Ruth Stringer (Cardiff, Wales)

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Tiny Coronavirus Stories: ‘Isolated for days on end’

In my most recent work, Wanderings, I include a broad range of photographic approaches, including digital capture and output, photo-encaustic on paper, and historical processes such as wet plate collodion. Wanderings began in 2015 as an investigation into place and family, and now amidst the COVID lockdown, I have found myself and my daughter isolated for days on end with nowhere to go but to walk on our six acres. In this space, new worlds have been created, ideas fostered, and photographic collaboration between mother and child has developed.
— Brooke C. White (Oxford, Mississippi)

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