Last fall, folk singer Anni Clark took inspiration from Swedish teenager and environmentalist Greta Thunberg and wrote the song “I’m With You, Greta.” Clark is back with new music, the song “Will It Ever Be the Same,” released earlier this week, and she’s struck lyrical gold again with a poignant track born out of despair.

Clark tells the song’s backstory in detail in the description of the song’s YouTube clip. Here’s the short version:

After a two-and-a-half month stretch of solo quarantining, Clark ventured from her home in Old Orchard Beach to Moosehead Lake and was able to spend three days reunited with her partner before he left for a planned fishing trip. On May 24, Clark was sitting on a dock when she was overcome with a profound wave of sadness stemming from the pandemic. To add literal insult to injury, Clark slipped and fell off the dock into the chilly lake water and sustained a serious injury on her left leg that required a trip to the emergency room and stitches. Four days later, she wrote “Will It Ever Be the Same” in 20 minutes, and it speaks to the level of depression and fear she had been experiencing.

In just over three minutes, Clark captures the essence of the human need for connection during this time of extreme isolation with lines like, “Can the love we know survive this thing much longer?” It will fill your eyes with tears but is also a balm for the emotional toll that COVID-19 is taking on many of us.

Here’s “Will It Ever Be the Same”: