Tipton Poetry Journal – Spring 2022
COVID Poem, or “Just Stay Alive” I.
Amy Suzanne Parker
First, I became liquid sloshing in a toilet bowl. My once-hibiscus-pink lips bloomed blue. I convulsed with cold, smothered myself in blankets. At the walk-in, a fever christened me at 102 degrees. My pulse was 150— my heart is a drunk hummingbird. In the ambulance, the paramedic gave me two doses of medicine to slow it down to 125. I felt it flutter, try to fly out of the cage of my chest. II. How do you stop your body from killing itself? Years of self-abuse and COVID raise the levels of my liver enzymes. Mom died of liver failure. I am afraid and only 35. She was 67. They said it was the Tylenol, not the psych meds. The way she popped them like PEZ for her headaches. The doctors assure me that I am recovering and leave my bodily functions unexplained. I forbid myself from doing the math— it’s how I sleep at night. That and the Trazodone. I wear her ring. It’s starting to slide off my finger. I turned into her, inheriting her body all over again. My abdomen inflates with ascites. I look eight months pregnant, she said, toward the end. I’ve never been pregnant, only with myself. I was an April baby, but Easter always arrives too soon. I can’t help but resurrect, like my grandpa did at 67 after his cirrhosis. It’s what my body does, regenerate, a starfish.
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