Been jogging by this skeleton since Halloween.

Scared the living crap out of me the first time I passed. It’s like… 12 feet tall? Kind of a weird year to go all-out on decorations when nobody’s trick-or-treating, but whatevs.

November 1, the rest of the ghouls and goblins disappeared. The skeleton stayed. Little too on the nose there 2020, amirite?

And stayed.

And stayed. Every day, I passed by, wondering when there wouldn’t be a giant fucking skeleton to greet me on my journey.

Christmas. Look at his face. He’s all, ‘guess this is my life now’. Relatable.

Thought for sure he’d be gone come New Years. The giant inflatable teddy bear that sat next to him for two weeks got sent back to Ye Olde Storage Shed, but Bones remained.

All alone, silent soldier of the deserted neighborhood.

For lack of other human interaction these days, I made a game, telling myself if I kept running, I’d get to see if he was still there, if he was dressed up different.

We were alike, he and I. At least in the sense there was nobody else around in a post-covid world. It took on morbid yet sweet overtones, a paranormal-yard-ornament-rom-com.

Last week:

I began thinking about him in the downtime, odd moments of the day.  This nagging feeling like I’d seen him before, you know? Almost this sense of deja vu . Like I’d been here before.

Eventually, it hit me. I have been here before. Art history class, circa high school.

I’m living in a medieval tapestry from plague times.