POEM

The Long Hauler

One year after, 700,000 are lost, faces from the evening news, others who have left indelible traces upon this life.

Each morning, I estimate antibodies, take 1000 mg of Vitamin C to compensate the missing. A sore arm and acute sadness

my only side-effect from a vial of panacea. My alienation wears an N95 against the vicissitudes of variants before I step foot upon daybreak.

At the workplace, I take the temperature of isolation once a day and it returns twice as high as the day before. I have learned

to camouflage loneliness with a walk in the park, a restaurant patio, friends six feet apart. By five o’clock

it is midnight already. I unlock the front door, close the world behind. After supper and the sorting of mail

the numbing of alcohol, sounds the house makes when nudged by evening hours, an echo somewhere

between solitude and desperation.