by Trishia Gail G. Fernandez

“Denormalization”. My fiction prof once told me that was the function of literature– to make us see the ordinary and the mundane in an entirely different way:
The pandemic came in like unwelcome poetry.
The same desk you sit on everyday, is still the same desk
Except… it’s not
Except it is
Except that
Your favorite song now ends on a different note
and someone switched around the “f” and “g” keys of your keyboard behind your back
Over Zoom, voices sound like shattered echoes
And you’ve forgotten what mouths and chins look like
Each breath leaves behind a ghost
making everything blurred
As the roar of the outside
world slowly dies
down
Your desk is all that remains