Last night we went to a 40th birthday bash for the husband's cousin. I awkwardly danced to Irish country music courtesy of a one-man band under a leaky marquee, washed down sandwiches cut into triangles with bottle after bottle of Corona, and returned home in a car driven by a cousin's daughter, the backseat crammed with five adults, as if we were fuckin teenagers.

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You cannot dwell in memory, I tell myself. Risk becoming an artefact. I think of younger selves, all staring out of windows, trying to imagine their futures, a future wholly unlike their present. Am I still that person, staring out of windows? I long for quarantine sometimes, just to get a breather, another refresher course on solitude, on being by myself without any external claims on my person.

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