Days pass in a daze

BELO HORIZONTE, BRAZIL  

And then the day you anticipated arrives and time, forever flowing at the same pace, does what it does. Friday comes and we catch a plane, and then another, and then another. We arrive at our final airport exhausted but alert to these familiar and yet dreamlike surroundings. We hop into a cab and drive through streets festooned with blank stares. We eventually, happily drag our bags up a flight of stairs and get situated. We take a shower and grab some bills to go buy a chicken to eat. We go to sleep with our bellies uncomfortably full. During the night I stumble down a strange hallway several times to a different bathroom to do the same thing. I wake up in a new place. 

A city is a huge creature and you can only touch very small parts of it. And now, with COVID making the rounds, it's difficult to get to know the city. We aren't locked in our apartment, but venturing out is not the freewheeling adventure it normally is in a new city surrounded by unfamiliar places. We venture out but we are behind masks and so the city too is behind a mask only offering itself up to friends and family. We can see a part of it, but we don't know what it's trying to say.