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You’re standing at the sliding glass door that enters into your balcony, but you don’t step out. You touch your fingertips to the glass and gaze at the green trees blowing in the wind. 

    It’s the first day of spring, but no one is outside to feel the slight change in the weather. 

    You crane your neck to see the streets past the blooming white flowers of the trees, and it’s empty. There are no cars, no people walking amongst the sidewalks. No teenagers hanging out or skateboarding where they’re not supposed to, not the old man and his dog that sits on the bench on the intersection of Rose and Climer. It’s silent. 

    You’ve cleaned the house with your family and you’ve completed your work. You have nothing to do, yet you could do anything you wanted. 

    Instead, you linger at the door of your balcony, surprised to feel that even as someone who’s mainly quiet in the community unless around their close friends, you miss everybody and everything. Even as an antisocial person you’re missing the outside world. 

    Sure, staying inside all day has its advantages and likings, but ever since that day you said goodbye, there was something missing. 

    You’ve only seen the outside world through social media. Posts from adults who are going out for their children’s needs - the grocery store shelves are bare. Posts from doctors who are risking their own health to live - they’re wearing astronaut-like suits. 

    But you wanted to see the good, the things that nature has given us, too: the clear oceans and rivers, the abundance of fish, a clearer sky. With no cars or factories, the earth had come back. 

    Mother Nature’s way of chiding humans, you suppose. 

    Even though you liked staying home, having free time in the afternoons after work, you wanted to see your friends. But you were stuck inside. “Shelter-in-place”, they said. 

Online school was okay. You woke up later. But it definitely felt like there was more work piled on your shoulders than you normally did. 

    And it was different, being stuck in your house with your family. You didn’t normally see them 24/7, not counting summer. The circumstances were much more dire than summer. You kept on getting on each others’ nerves. And it was a little stressful, having to deal with it sometimes. 

    As the light from the sun went from blinding white to golden to soft orange, you tried to keep busy with your own interests until you were to go to sleep again and to repeat the process once more. As you’ve been doing for a little over a week. 

    You thought it would be fun to have online school, but then… there goes interaction with your friends. There go the fun memories you could have shared. Instead, it’s from screen to screen. 

    You fall asleep that night, faster than you normally would have when there was a lot going around you. There wasn’t that much change, where you were now. And considering that life is all about change… what is it now? 

    A girl with golden-brown hair and tanned skin reaches out her hand to you. You take it, and she leads you out of your home. 

    “Should we even be here?” you ask, and she laughs and says nothing. 

    “I don’t think this is a good idea,” you say, but you follow her into the streets as she doesn’t reply. 

    As the two of you walk hand in hand, you smell the fresh air. It feels cleaner. And it’s quiet. It’s even eerier when the loudest part of town is quiet. No one is around to see the two of you. 

    You keep walking with her and time seems to speed up until you reach a hill, the grass green and tall. The two of you walk up it, and when you reach the top, it almost seems like a totally different world. 

    You hear nothing. But you can still see everything. 

    You look down upon the familiar yet unfamiliar city, with strangely timed traffic lights and no cars. Occasionally, one would catch your eye as it turns corners and drives ahead, but there’s only one every five or so minutes. 

    You look to your right and let go of the girl’s hand. She follows you as you approach a stream. You remember seeing it one other time, in the same place. 

   It used to be brown and murky, and there were only a few fish that swam along the currents. But now, it’s as clear as glass and there are multitudes of fish and other stream life. You crouch and instinctively put a hand in, and it’s like putting your hand into the tide pools at the aquarium. The fish swim around your hand in surprise but it’s a beautiful feeling and sight. 

    You blink again, and the sky is dark. The girl taps your shoulder and you turn. You stand up and the two of you walk back to where you were started, in the clearing of the trees. 

    She gestures for you to sit down next to her and you do, and you watch as the stars fall from the depths of the sky. 

    “Oh,” you say, gasping lightly as you look upwards. 

    You can catch the slightest difference in the sky. At least you don’t have to strain your eyes to see the smaller stars instead of the usual constellations - Orion, Gemini, the Big Dipper. There’s so much you could see from high up, too. 

    You don’t remember how long you’ve been staring at the stars, but when you wake up, you know that that is how the world looks now, and hopefully it’ll stay like that for a bit longer. Just a bit.