Sunday Afternoon on the Upper East Side, Winter, 2020

by Phyllis Chesler

My home town is certainly not a ghost town—but I can’t remember such empty streets on a Manhattan weekend afternoon.  True, there are still cars on the road—but they are fewer in number; dog-owners and dog-walkers are still entering and exiting the park—but they are fewer in number too—and the usual mob on the museum steps are gone; in their place, are masked and socially distanced figures standing quietly, decorously, on line. While there some seriously bundled-up people are still dining in clear, heated bubbles outdoors, the overall silence is sad, strange, but under other circumstances might be experienced as lovely, but that silence turns ominous when sirens pierce the air reminding us that we are still under siege, that one of our city-dwellers is now on their way to a hospital for life-saving treatment.