CORONAVIRUS HONEYMOON, A tasty treat by Debora L. Hosey

“You didn’t load the dishwasher correctly!

“You didn’t empty the sink drainer!

“You bounced the closet door off its track!

“You put too much hot sauce on my eggs!

“You mismatched my socks!”

My husband’s morning complaints washed over me as I escaped to the back porch and breathed in the early morning freshness. We were quarantined, marooned, self-isolated—stuck—home together during this international now national coronavirus crisis. Three weeks together, more time together than the last 20 years put together…well, maybe not, but it sure feels like it.

From upstairs my beloved bellows: “Where’s the toilet paper?” I close my eyes, sigh, and think that there are many many Americans thinking that same thing right now.

“In the hall closet with the 50 others you bought!” I yell back…

I turn my face up to the sun and its warmth massages the tension headache away. I breathe in through my nose and out from my mouth a few times to calm me, and when I open my eyes again, there’s Tyrannosaurus Rex standing in front of me.

Of course there is. We stare at each other and I’m impressed by those teeth which exerted the strongest jaw pressure from any land animal that ever walked the earth. I hear my husband coming through the kitchen, shoes on as usual, and he yells, “Dammit, you let the coffee get cold.” I could swear the T-rex is looking at me with sympathy in his tiny, alert eyes.

The Hub comes out onto the porch and says, “What’s a t-rex doing here” as if it were my fault…as usual. Hub and I contemplate the t-rex standing in the pink petunias. Then the beast roars, his rancid, hot breath blowing us a step backward. I swear, I do swear, it winks at me.

He lunges forward and before we could react, he snatches the Hub between his jaws and shakes him, Hub’s shoes flying in different directions. I noticed the Hub was correct, I’d mismatched his socks…and then he swallows Hub in one big crunchy, gluppy gulp.

“Snap out of it, are you having a bad dream?” I feel the Hub’s hand on my shoulder, whole and warm. I smile in the darkness, and I reach for him and and feel his familiar warmth and scent and hold him tight.

“Just relieving some stress I say, and I kiss the top of his head.

 “You didn’t have to wake me up to do it!” he says, and I swear I can hear a roar somewhere in the night.

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