Fences
7 A.M.
by Gauraa Shekhar
My husband tells me he’ll watch the dog for a few hours so I’ll have some to write, and I get that feeling in my chest, you know the one, it’s in the same realm of packing anxiety the night before a big move.
Last month, we adopted a puppy. Has it been a month? I check in with my husband. Yes, he says, we got him a few days before Issue Eight. There are some righteous metaphors for the passing of time during quarantine, many of which we’ve published in No Contact, and I’ll tell you that bringing a two-month-old puppy into a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment during isolation is a long, barely-edited supercut of them all.
The day before we brought Tanner home, we pushed the couch against the dining table, boarded the kitchenette with black pet fences, sectioned off majority of our living room to make space for our new puppy. And that’s when it hit me. When will I have time to write? I asked my husband. He said something about maternity leave, after which I stopped listening, so I don’t know just what, but I can guess.
My designated hours quick-dissolve before me. I close the bedroom door, light a scented candle, put on tube socks, position my laptop on a make-shift pillow-desk, and pass out without a single word written.
At night, in bed, a story comes to me. A line, then two. I reach for the phone, but it’s charging by my sleeping husband’s bedside. I repeat the lines to myself, hoping they’ll stay, but when I try to reach for them in the morning, they’re gone.
In my dreams, I’m having trouble sleeping. In my dreams, I’m writing a story entirely in Reddit threads. In my dreams, I’m giving a TED Talk on writing. I always begin with, first: you need to make space to write. I never remember anything more, but I’m always reaching.
I carry Tanner to our gated living room window in the morning, and we watch from behind the bars, as kids with backpacks and masks walk to school. I wonder what it’s like to be a kid in elementary school in 2020. I wonder what it’s like to be a dog born in 2020—do they know any different? Are they used to the smells? The bleaches, the sanitizers?
Do you think it’s time to move? I ask my husband. To Brooklyn? he says. No, like, move move. I say.
I spend my designated hours the following week on Zillow, looking at rental homes in neighboring states, pouring over floor-plans with enough space for two writing desks.
