Now we are back in touch we are uncertain what to do. Do I shake your hand? Hug you? Kiss you in the French style, blowing air past both cheeks. Quickly from arms-length. Lips never touching skin.
Now that we can see each other’s faces, mouths, noses, uncovered chins, do we stare? Do we notice every little stubble, every piece of lettuce caught between lazy teeth? And the noses! How big they have grown. They have become snouts, trunks, probosci!
Do I ask how you are? Oh, it’s just a cold. Do I wear my mask around my neck for going inside? To shop for dinner, do I handle the produce? How did I do this in before-times? There always have been germs, sticky fingers, dripping noses. Sneezes!
People you shied away from. Those you embraced.
Never mind. It was just the premature budding of a false spring. Dig your mask out of the wash. Put on your wary face and pull your jacket tight for just a little while longer.
clouds of smoke and germs
enter your orifices
rain promised by dawn
is the author of four chapbooks, most recently Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune (Finishing Line Press, 2021). A fifth will be published by Main Street Rag this spring, entitled Viruses, Guns and War. Her writing has appeared in numerous print and online journals such as Rise Up Review, Gyroscope, Writers Resist, Poets Reading the News, The Poeming Pigeon, and MacQueen’s Quinterly, among others. She is the former editor of the Turkey Buzzard Review in Bolinas, California. Now living in Northern California with her husband and two aging dogs, Dotty practices environmental law and helps elect progressive candidates to office. She is working on a website.
