Peculiar words crawling over the
pages of my journal
Leafs of beige bound by counterfeit
leather
Small enough to rest within my palm
Masks, quarantine, isolation, Covid,
Alone
Lyrics scribbled upon blue lines traversing
Three hundred and more pages, one
page for each day
Turning back the ink-smudged pages
A quest for what I have forgotten
Notions pilfered by a thief in the
night
Named Rum
To page twenty-six I turn
The day you left wearing your blue
mask
Stained by tears of unknown fright
“It is just the sniffles”
I proffer
From behind my unmasked face
You wanted to believe me
More than the three-letter castle of
mandarins
More than the bespectacled practitioner
With a silly name and fat wallet
More than the curve refusing to
flatten
You wanted to believe
You didn’t believe
Donning your blue mask
Saddled by purse overflowing
With vessels of purity
You left me
Page thirty-one
You called to talk to me
“It is just the sniffles”
I vow
“Come home, to me”
I am tired of being alone
“I cannot” you cried
Poised on the line between manic
and truth
Page sixty-seven
A text-no voice
Punctuated with a red heart emoji
“Come home” I reply (no emoji)
“I cannot”
You lie
Page ninety-nine
Just a X
Scrawled in burgundy stain
I may have been drunk
Ask Rum, he never lies
Pages one-hundred and beyond
Echoed words defining a new norm
No one really likes
You do not call me anymore
(Or text)
Blank pages
Suddenly something new
Page three-hundred and eighteen
A fresh word
Vaccine
Page three hundred and nineteen
You toss a text, smiling
Vaccine Vaccine! Wear your mask and
run!
Followed by a flexing bicep emoji
“For the sniffles?”
I reply
You don’t
Page…today
New words—
Positive Test
For you
And your mask
And your purity in a bottle
And your Vaccine Vaccine
And your leaving
Me
Sniffle, sniffle
