I come to, lightly awake in the soft dawn, in between. The thin membrane starting to disintegrate between the sweat on my body and the dream in which I saw my dad, my grandma meeting our daughter. I want to claw my way back up that tunnel, back into the recess of the deepest neural pathways of my mind, to this other place that was quiet and still. Noiseless actually. Forgiving and undemanding.

Not the rush of the world outside my window, construction trucks and Lyft drivers and parents navigating pre-school drop off. The rush that was stilled for many months, now, day by day, picking up, increasing in decibels, birdsong distant again, reopening, even with 55,000 people getting positive COVID tests daily. Up from what was 5000 positive COVID tests daily a year ago. When we all went inside as much as we could, when two weeks seemed like a promise and not a minute. As we swung from one monkey bar to the next, waiting to see if we would all free fall together, the in between.