BY JAMES E CHERRY

Featured in vol 7, issue 3: healing

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.

JAMES E. CHERRY is the author of three collections of poetry, two novels and a collection of short fiction. A native Jacksonian, he has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and is an adjunct professor of English at the University of Memphis-Lambuth. Visit him at: jamesEcherry.com.

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