Capsule Stories Isolation Edition

By Capsule Stories

Featuring poetry, stories, and essays by established authors and emerging writers, Capsule Stories Isolation Edition captures people’s stories and feelings during the coronavirus pandemic and the often isolating social measures that come with it—social distancing, shelter in place orders, isolation, quarantine. Readi

• Language: English
• Publisher: Capsule Stories
• Release date: Apr 22, 2020
• ISBN: 9781734324655

Book preview

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C A P S U L E S T O R I E S

Isolation Edition

Published exclusively by Capsule Stories

Masthead

Natasha Lioe, Founder and Publisher

Carolina VonKampen, Publisher and Editor in Chief

Cover art by Matthew Torres

Book design by Carolina VonKampen

Ebook conversion by Ines | Book Formatter

Ebook ISBN: 9781734324655

© Capsule Stories LLC 2020

All authors retain full rights to their work after publication.

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, distributed, or used in any manner without written permission of Capsule Stories except for use of quotations in a book review.

Contents

Capsule Stories

Letter from the Editors

Prologue

I am writing to you about the recent outbreak . . . - Iona Murphy

What If. . . - Jan Chronister

C-19 - Isabella J Mansfield

But Outbreak Was Just a Movie! and Now I Wake Up with a Different Kind of Headache - Isabella J Mansfield

March 15, 2020 - James Croal Jackson

March 16, 2020 - James Croal Jackson

The Last Word(s) - Barbara Simmons

Plague Interlude - Katy Scrogin

A Handful of Stories - Nathan Beck

But Not for Us - Josh Rank

The Five Senses of COVID-19 - Ange Yang

March 29, 2020 - April Bayer

I Want My Dad to Come Pick Me Up - Mary DeCarlo

Bed - Alana Saltz

an experience of stillness - Natasha Lioe

Aftershock - Kendra Nuttall

Lysis - Tara Iyer

Quarantine Gratitude - Shannon Barringer

Like Home - Daniel Edward Moore

The Way We See It - Cassia Hameline

Pandemic - Steve Denehan

Peeling Carrots - Steve Denehan

Slacks - Steve Denehan

End Walter - Gabriel da Silva-Schicchi

Love in the Time of Social Isolation - Adrian Ernesto Cepeda

I Am Still as Tender as Before . . . - Adrian Ernesto Cepeda

Social Spacing - J Hirtle

Plagues as in Plural - Daniel Edward Moore

Third Planet - Morgan Russell

The Clementine Seeds - Carl Alexandersson

To My Son - Claire Taylor

I am 35 weeks pregnant and burdened - Victoria Schofield Dobbs

Vernal Equinox Lockdown - Jane Ellen Glasser

The Place - Nicola Ashbrook

Contagious Realization - Tarusi Jain

The Country Is on Lockdown - Connor Harrison

Containment - John Mungiello

Blackbird Poem - Megan Mary Moore

Apocalypses (Don’t) Start This Way - Sarah James

The Evening Chorus - Kaylyssa Quinn

Tiny Agents - Shannon Barringer

The Space Between Us - Susan Coultrap-McQuin

endless bowls of sky - Amy Shimshon-Santo

The Twenty-Second Rule - Diana Clark

When the Faucet Flows - Adrian Ernesto Cepeda

Dear Future - Sarah Marquez

A Letter to a Stranger - T.C. Anderson

Contributors

Editorial Staff

Submission Guidelines

Letter from the Editors

Words stay with us as we go through life, and the words we kept sacred yesterday may be different than the words we need today. Whatever you may be experiencing right at this time in your life, there are the right words for it. The right words comfort us in need. They breathe life into our beings. They show us how we feel. And we are here to give them to you.

That’s why we decided to publish a special edition of Capsule Stories. Normally, we publish four editions each year, one at the beginning of each season. But throughout March 2020, we saw our world rapidly changing. It didn’t feel like anything we knew. It was tough to process how quickly things changed—travel restrictions, social distancing, schools closed, stay at home orders, businesses shut down. We didn’t have the words we needed to experience this moment in time.

This edition of Capsule Stories captures our stories and feelings during the coronavirus pandemic and the isolating social measures that come with it. We recognize that in uncertain times, writers often turn to the written word to work through their feelings, to document all the changes in their lives, to be angry with the world, to heal. We want to provide writers with a place to express those feelings, and we want to give readers a collection of writing that helps them feel less alone in this isolating and lonely time.

The pandemic pushes to the surface all these emotions and feelings and affects our relationships with our parents, friends, significant others, neighbors in unprecedented ways. Even if you’re lucky enough to get through the pandemic without getting sick or without your loved ones and friends getting sick or dying, this is still a life-changing experience for all of us. Many of us are stuck at home for weeks or months on end and are learning how to adjust to that reality, while essential workers are forced to go into work with often inadequate protection against the virus. And we’re all afraid of this invisible virus, of catching it, of spreading it to others. Reading about people’s experiences from all over the world during this moment—the fear, the grief, the boredom, the uncertainty, the gratitude, the joy in the small things—has been heartbreaking and astounding.

We are in a story, an actual story, and don’t know how it will end—for us, for our community, for our world. But we also know that as writers, we can write the ending. The actions we take during the pandemic, the words we write, the stories we tell will all shape how this story ends for us. We hope Capsule Stories Isolation Edition helps tell that story.

—Natasha Lioe, Founder and Publisher, and Carolina VonKampen, Publisher and Editor in Chief

Prologue

Isolation Edition

It began with vague whispers, tweets about a virus spreading through China. Then through Asia, and Italy, and Europe, and the United States. One by one, and all at once, countries and states and cities shut down. We were ordered to stay home, shelter in place, isolate ourselves, quarantine our families. We scrolled and scrolled and scrolled until we couldn’t form cohesive thoughts anymore.

Some of us were laid off, or furloughed, or forgotten. When we