Chronicling the Days – Constantin Polychronakos

In April 2020, we invited writers in Quebec to submit a story of a single day during the strange, uneasy time of coronavirus and pandemic, of social distancing and self isolation, of lockdown and quarantine.

We’re thrilled to announce that these stories have been gathered in Chronicling the Days: Dispatches from a Pandemic (Guernica Press). To learn more and buy the book, please visit https://www.guernicaeditions.com/title/9781771836579.

Please also join us on the QWF FB Community page, and let the authors know if their words resonated.

This piece is by Constantin Polychronakos, writing on April date, 2020.

Home alone.

Call it an opportunity to catch up with all the things I have been putting off. Call it an opportunity to meditate on the illusion of certainty. But what am I doing today, cocooning all alone in the safety of my apartment, phoning, e-mailing and Zooming with my non-urgent patients? Is singing So Long Marianne out the window the best I can do? I should have been in the front lines, in the emergency room, in the intensive care, fighting COVID in a hail of droplets. I know I am invincible! I know I can beat the coronavirus, I have already vanquished it, caught it by the horns and wrestled it to the ground, with only a few bruises to show for it.

To read the rest of the story, please support our community and check out Chronicling the Days: Dispatches from a Pandemic