The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow
By Yash Seyedbaghari
The corpses pile up but we proclaim the sun will come out. Tomorrow is so close, it must happen, there are signs, in spite of everything. Some states aren’t as bad, right? We’ll be able to take to the roads in RVs, to take to small mountain communities. We’ll go to the beach, our families and friends fragmented and whole all in once. We will laugh and curse at each other, talking over each other with the force of news anchors but with more organic, high-octane energy.
For now, we walk around our blocks at dusk watching the streetlamps snap on with electrical energy, a butter-colored warmth in skies that still convey the symphonic majesty of lavenders and pinks. We know the sun must come out, for there is the moon, that luminous lady, smiling. The crickets are even calling. Tomorrow is coming. The sun will absolutely come out. With each step, we think of tomorrow, even though each tomorrow has news about more corpses, more states hesitating where the rollbacks are concerned. Numbers are subjective, aren’t they? Aren’t people overestimating? They must be.
We speak to friends and family via Zoom, in brief bursts, for there is an awkwardness to the task. We talk of watching Curb Your Enthusiasm or old episodes of Barry on HBO, we talk of being beat by heat. When we say I love you, we fumble for the words. How do you say I love you without wondering if the Chinese aren’t listening in? Or the Cheeto’s minions for that matter? How did you do all that? How do we talk of masturbation or breasts or penises over electronic distance? We end by proclaiming that the sun is going to come out and we believe it. If you believe it, it must be true. It must.
The corpses keep piling up, states are hotspots. More cases, more despair. But we walk beyond our blocks now. We can’t hold back. We take to the bars, drink two shots of desperation, a fifth of foolishness. We dance around the jukebox. Bodies thump their own germ-infested rhythms. The sun will come out and we’ll return to something that’s called normal, even if we don’t know what the fuck that is. There was a normal before 9/11, a normal before Pearl Harbor, a normal before Hitler, for fuck’s sake.
At least we have the bodies tonight and how good it feels to bump into once-belligerent bastards who bound about the bar with newfound bonhomie. Bodies move, bump, play pool. We know we should leave after half an hour, after a single drink. We must, but we can’t, the neon Bud and Coors signs seducing us with electrical lullaby, the constraint of bars the most open thing in the world now. The little spaces between booths connote congregation, along with the narrow bar with its round little seats. Once we wanted quiet bar nights, now we need bodies.
After all, the sun’s going to come out tomorrow. Things are at a peak, but peaks crest and motherfuckers are felled when it happens. We must celebrate tonight. Things must crest soon. Logic dictates it.
We are among friends, among family. They know the Playboys we concealed, late-night masturbation sessions, mannequins we stole from department stores, saunas we got high in and fled stark naked. They know the nicknames we despise and the ones we love, they know our hidden fondness for classical music and our celebration of The Coen Brothers and they know what it means to sit alone in sterile basements. They know the way we cry, lilting or like Adam Sandler or not at all. They hugged us, rocked us, sang us embarrassing lullabies, gave us our first beers. They talked us through divorce and the bad kind of fragmentation. They know our tempers, our generosities, and we cannot let them go. The corpses will pile up, the sun will come out, and they will be here with us for this fleeting moment. Maybe they will die and we do not want that. Maybe they will catch the virus, recover, and walk into uncertainty.
But they are with us.
We fill our lawns and spaces with thumping bass and puke and hangovers. We party while the naysayers call us villains, assholes. We know the SNL writers are preparing to milk us for you can milk anything with nipples as Gaylord Focker proclaimed back in the days of normalcy, of 2000, when hanging chads and lockboxes were the thing. We know that people are frightened by the sight of growing bodies, expanding, contracting. We feel their pain, we feel shame, even if we conceal it in glass jars and in basements. But how do you tell the naysayers the truth of things? They strive to do good, but do they know the particulars? How do you talk to people who judge and conceal themselves?
So here’s the truth:
The sun will come out tomorrow. But yesterday was a tomorrow too, and this is today and they are here. How can you wait alone? How can you lose? We don’t deign to think of these things, preparing the next party, the next bar night, the next gathering. After all, the sun will come out tomorrow, even if tomorrow is a previous tomorrow times ten or twelve. It must and we will celebrate it all, the naysayers joining in the fracas, the bumping of bodies, the smell of sweat, pot, perfume so clear and beautiful. We are preparing for it all. The naysayers will prepare too, because you can only say nay, nay for so long. It’s nature they tell us, the friends and family.
The sun will fucking come out tomorrow. Let there be no doubt.
The sun will come out. We think.
We know. We are together and we know.
Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. A native of Idaho, Yash’s work is forthcoming or has been published in WestWard Quarterly, Café Lit, and Ariel Chart, among others.