The Long Haul After three years of caution (to protect my husband’s vulnerable heart and lungs), we stop wearing masks. Within ten days, we both test positive. Four months later, I am unmoored from my life. My body is a stranger, my energy unreliable. I’m too hot, I’m too cold, my heart races, my blood pressure dips and rises, as wobbly as a toddler. I have a good day. I do too much (it doesn’t feel like too much at the time). The next day, I am a weeping mess, a bawling child. I sob in my husband’s arms, beyond consolation. A storm has blown in from mid-Atlantic, I can find no shelter, the storm is in me and I am the storm. I am the pouring tears and thundering waves, the leaden clouds and the lightning rage. One wrinkle in my brain tries to hold on to a life-raft: this will pass, this is the virus, this outsized grief and terror for the future. But it is useless. I am swept away. And then it is gone. There is sunlight, dappled light. Clouds come and go, my feet touch the ground, my body is my own. Until the next time. Monica Corish Monica Corish lives in the north-west of Ireland. She is an award-winning writer of poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction. Her work has been published in The Ekphrastic Review, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Ireland, Myslexia and elsewhere. She leads writing workshops online and in-person. www.monicacorish.ie
1 Comment
Oliver Maher
10/27/2024 08:55:06 pm
Lovely Monica, keep well
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