People are still walking barefoot on the sand.
The sea looks the same as it did yesterday.
My phone vibrates.
The news announces the first confirmed cases in the country.
Talk of lockdowns follows almost immediately.
Restrictions. Borders. Movement.
Paradise suddenly feels provisional.
I have seen this virus on the international news.
In other countries.
In crowded hospitals.
In numbers that rose too quickly to feel abstract.
Lethal, they said.
Unforgiving.
Relentless.
Back then, it felt distant.
Contained by geography.
Something happening elsewhere.
Now it is here.
And the distance collapses.
I start thinking about ordinary things.
My dental visits.
My derma sessions.
Appointments that were routine just days ago, now floating, undefined.
Small concerns, maybe.
But they were signs of normal life.
Of continuity.
Of a future assumed.
Then the heavier questions arrive.
Will me and my wife be okay?
Will our parents be okay?
Will I still have a job?
Not eventually.
Soon.
I look around and realize how quickly certainty drains out of a place.
How a destination can turn into a waiting room.
We count what we have.
A few face masks left.
Enough for now. I think.
I wonder if we will still be allowed to go home.
Or if we will be locked down here, suspended between sunset and uncertainty.
The sky turns orange, then purple.
It is beautiful in a way that almost feels inappropriate.
Fear and beauty sit side by side, neither canceling the other out.
So I pray.
For safe passage home.
For all of us.
For the grace to stay steady when nothing else is.
The sun disappears. Night settles in.
And as the world begins to close in ways we do not yet understand, I hold on to the only thing that still feels solid.
Faith.