Dear Yuri,
Last night I dreamt that I emerged from the skylight and into the world, and everything was as it was. I had not yet forgotten to have children, and I had emptied the moth traps of moths. The moon arrived, yellowed, smiled at me, and walked with me into town. I talked to the moon about time, how we had unhooked it from its ordinary place, and been left with something slow and unwieldy and violent. Lockdown time was long enough to drown a mountain range, to pound a bed of rocks into dust. The moon asked if I had ever fixed the duvet in my lockdown bed, and I replied that there had not been enough time, or too much, and I was too busy being pounded into dust. Cars passed us as the night turned, each one playing live music, and inside the Costcutter people were dancing around bottles of laundry detergent and packs of butter and pasta. Old London looked as beautiful as a song. The moon said over the last few months it had never felt so looked at, not for at least a hundred years, and asked me to imagine all the people like me, staring out of their skylights, saying, I am sorry I lost you, and what that might do to a moon. It was a lot of pressure, it said, but it kept moving. And in my dream I felt all the love I thought we had lost filling us up in one gasp and I asked the moon to please wake me up and the moon said, I’m a key worker, and, you’re awake. You’re awake. You’re awake.