Five Years, But Who Is Counting?
This post was originally shared on Incurably Human before that publication merged with 100 Poems to become Wild Ground.
Sitting down to write this post, I am surprised (and mildly dismayed) to see that the last post I sent you was exactly one year ago—on my four-year anniversary of long covid. I guess you know what today marks, then, and why I’m here. I wanted to write you something new and heartfelt and ideally, deeply profound yet also a little bit hilarious, but I’ve been in a brain fog flare for a couple weeks now that’s making screen time and cognitive tasks difficult. So instead of a fresh, shiny post, I want to share three poems I’ve written about long Covid in the past year.
Maybe you don’t have long Covid. Maybe you have long [insert other illness] or long anxiety or long grief or long battle-to-put-food-on-the-table or long friction-with-mother-in-law. Everyone has some long struggle or another. I hope something in these poems will speak to that part of you. If you enjoy them, consider subscribing to my other (far more active) Substack, 100 Poems, where I share a poem and prompt every week. And for those of you who like silver linings and happy endings, I guess it’s worth mentioning that I never wrote poetry before getting sick, and I’m not sure I ever would have if my body hadn’t forcibly slowed me down.
Long Covid (1)
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Long Covid (2)
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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Long Covid (3)
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What long thing are you living inside of or trying to live beyond? Are there particular lines in any of these poems that spoke to you? Or particular bits of wisdom that you want to drop like breadcrumbs for those who are walking a trail of hardship similar to your own? I’d love to hear your experiences and reflections.