Plague Poems #11

 

Psychosomatic

 

All it takes

is going out to do the laundry

and some fool there,

unmasked and ungloved,

folding his clothes

on the table,

or my super,

cheerful and oblivious

of physical distancing

starting to fix the dryer

right next to the one

I’m unloading

while my back is turned—

 

and every follicle of my hair

is filled with invisible fire ants,

my tongue and lips

burning like I’ve eaten jalapeños,

an itch like poison ivy

consumes my face and hands.

If I were an anxious person

this would be hell,

but I manage to shake it off

knowing I cannot actually feel something

measured in nanometers

invading my cells.

 

I worry, not that I’m a hypochondriac—

after all, the threat is real, the symptoms

varied and changing—but that others aren’t.

Worry more, I want to tell them.

Better to become temporarily neurotic,

afraid of outside, and germs, and

touching others, of going out without a mask,

of others standing too close, and to be

constantly washing everything,

than to bring

Death home with you

for a visit.

 

When it’s over,

better we all have a few scars

than holes

in our lives.

 

‒April 30, 2020, Brooklyn

©Lee Kottner, 2020