Tom Barwell
positively long covid
for Maeve Boothby O'Neill
when it grabbed her by the hair,
and ripped her friends away,
exposing her soft, child’s neck,
and knifed her laugh in prison.
when it pushed her onto a grid
that told us she was 11, and 33932,
not a girl, or nature whose locks shone golden.
when she became
subsidence, the slump of a sand cliff,
washed out by violent emesis leaving
two quiet grey beaches, the shape of eclipses.
the whiteness of the doctors’ smiles.
the whiteness of secrets,
the epaulettes on biblical tests,
it’s all in the head, the pain is just
a mind’s way of making sense.
don’t worry, your daughter wears
sunglasses in bed, who cannot bear the lightest touch,
nor kiss, except the dead. perhaps…
some noise-cancelling headphones would fit, and cbt?
it grabbed her hair and pushed her in the bowl.
it grabbed a family, broke every bone.
just the mind processing: is it something at home?
the hospital walls and quarantine,
wiped-clean as a camera lens, the rotating doors
are tired legs, such tired, tired legs. antiseptic
bed unstained by the last patient’s leaks.
the scent of breath just breathed and baths bathed in pain. its bolts.
its wheels locked on the linoleum.
the stuffed animals tumbled out of the cage bed
to die on the floor, strewn among the insulated wires,
alarms chirp and sing beside the plastic bins of discarded rubber gloves,
the sharps waiting in the mailbox. the hum of
fresh blood.
so much to somatize.
pure math
war is here: it removes its
head and walks toward you,
monet paints a hooker on a hook.
the place? where homes are grey
gruel, sub-divided by cubes of
factory meat.
pure math, where bush fires
push polar bears to
steam themselves in sinking oil,
and salmon boil the rust rivers,
throwing their skins to the
roiling trees.
pure math, psychopath,
white vest at the truck stop,
gunshot, highway markings scorch
an ageing nose, schools closed,
but there’s no
drama here, the receipt says so.
an old lady walks by with
a grid-sided shopping cart,
the branding grasps at her hair
till she tips inside.
and what of the stars, now
they’re decimals, too broke
to usher van gogh?
their laughter flirts over land and
drowning sea,
into the gasping bellies of
plastic whales, flukes billowing
in the moondust.
each particle rises without gravity,
minerals turned to
radiance, pluming higher and higher
weakening beats and brighter colours,
diamonds gently
suspended, taking their time to
turn and catch the sun.
Tom's a poet, long Covid advocate, psychotherapist and favourite chair for his dog.
