I’ll never forget the first time I hit another person. I was in primary school, playing footy on the field, when one of my friends yelled at me for making a mistake and without thinking, I punched the side of his head, driving his face into the fence. I remember his shock, how the boys around us seemed to absorb it, and the game kept going even as he ran to a teacher and both of us left the field. I had detention for a week, writing lines in the office, and maybe this is why I became a writer, this buried impulse to respond to harm with words. It’s been two decades and I still think about that moment, about all the instances of violence in my life, how it’s never just physical, how the impact shivers into the fabric of your being, splinters your spirit. I have become an expert at cataloguing my faults, each sliver of wood in my soul, this small forest of sorrows; this is what I’ve been doing throughout the pandemic, writing line after line and hoping the hurting will end.

Millions around the world have exited the field, have been killed by this virus, and we keep absorbing the violence of that, within an intensified isolation, as if it’s not exacting a toll on our spirit, our collective sense of self. Truthfully, I don’t know how much writing or reading can help, but I do know that without it, I would long since have left this life. We need to stop reacting instinctively and pause for long enough to understand our behaviour and change for the better—as opposed to pausing in the hope that we won’t have to change, which is the current policy. The ability to simply stop seems to have deserted us, or more accurately, the engine of capitalism continues to force us onward, no matter the cost.