During the lockdown, I huddle in my room.

The lockdown took Mama’s smiles and jokes about Minnie Mouse fucking Goofy and lepers at hockey games.

Now it’s grunts, arched eyebrows, nightly vodka. Late-night fists smashing drywall. That is, when she’s not on the phone, proclaiming himself essential.

 She’s a bartender. Was.

“Doesn’t the world need to drink now?” she growls.

I think of walking out. But the world looks only after their own.

My door’s broken too.

Fists slam with more force. Glass shatters. The TV meets Mama’s baseball bat.

Tears rise, broken liturgies.

I slink into shadows.

The world locks.

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Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. His stories, "Soon”, “How To Be A Good Episcopalian”, and "Tales From A Communion Line," were nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.