Chronicling the Days – Clare Chodos-Irvine

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 Clare Chodos-Irvine, written on March 25, 2020.

Our apartment is small and everything lives inside of handmade ceramics. I spend the mornings drinking cups of tea and cutting long, thin slices of sourdough. I eat them while watching a video about someone else who’s stuck inside their own small apartment. It’s quiet except the wind is pushing through a small gap in my window, and I can hear it whistling. I can imagine a cat sitting on my bed, licking itself in the sunlight, except I didn’t think ahead and buy a cat before all this started, so it’s just a patch of sunlight and a pair of sweatpants I haven’t put away yet.

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