For too long now
so many people have been
deprived of many vital things:
work, travel, entertainment,
and most importantly physical
interactions with friends and family -
but now we have all been given
the permission to engage in
"cautionary hugs";
if there could ever be such a thing?
Never the less, it is now permissable
for people to embrace their love ones
in close quarters and show physical
affection for someone openly
for all the world to see...
even though the virus plaguing
the world continues to rage
in variations across the planet,
some of us are now able to meet up
and talk with someone, inside somewhere,
in ways that for so long have felt
like distant memories or the stuff of dreams.

It's has been so long now since people
were able to kiss, hug, and be with
people who they know so well,
and it has been so long since people
have been able to interact with
someone of significance, face to face,
that it will undoubtedly be hard
for some people at first to revert
back to how people used act
without thinking with one another...
some people might be more than
a little reticent to eat inside a restaurant,
or to sit in close proximity to someone
who they do not personally know -
because they may have lost the meaning
and the importance at the heart of
why people want and need to have
close associations with other people
for the benefit of their own mental health.

I realize that everybody has their own
individual process when attempting to
adapt to rapid differences in circumstance -
and we all know how hard it was when we
were first told that we had to stay apart,
that we had keep our distance,
and that we had to protect ourselves from
what we might be unwittingly exposed to;
but there comes a time when enough is enough -
and to me, as long as the world
proceeds with caution down this
long and winding road back to normality,
and as long as people continue to volunteer
to do their part and be vaccinated
for the good of the many,
then why not give people to right
to have something and to give something
meaningful to someone else as simple,
and as a much needed and long overdue,
as a hug.