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For Elodie

For Elodie

Did you forget about Covid? Elodie didn’t… Published in The Menteur Magazine, For Elodie tells the story of a friend’s battle with Long Covid.

You live on a rectangular island

no bridges only a boat

of thin bones

often sinks leaves you drowning on your Tibetan throw

The waves rise, smother passwords, yesterday, PIN codes

There is no known Antidote


Today you made it to the far shore

ate a lamb samosa, drank a grenadine

over the kitchen sink

You even put on a shoe

looked at your reflection in the mirror by the door.

That’s as far as you got


Tomorrow you didn’t make it

Friends visited

Your words      got stuck

like they sometimes do

your hands gestured with fingers clawed shut

You tried to explain      the      Problem


Your disease arrived in 2021

but unlike everyone

it didn’t stick in your lung

but in your      brain

marooned you      alone      with no one

You missed their Boat


Your friends leave, disappointed

faces shut

they cross the ocean

your island shrinking

in the wake of their rising Sun

They are unlikely to sail back


That night you have a beautiful dream

It is not a dream that you are healed

It is a dream that you are believed

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