— lines written after having tested positive for COVID —
A little observation I had this evening:
The sick durations of a person’s life
have a habit of stitching themselves together
in a continuum that ignores the larger
continuum of healthy, “normal” life,
or at least dims its corridors for a few days.
We succumb again to the haunting illusion
that we’ve never succeeded to our best,
have fallen well short of our furthest potentials
by virtue of coughs and bruises that just add up,
slow us down, thwart our projects, check our hopes…
It’s an illusion that takes its own sort of toll,
growing more defined and insistent as we age.
These two continua through which we roll
are all that we’ll ever know of triumph and rage.