I write a letter to my COVID Vaccine in March 2021
Me.
I do not think that I have wanted any person more,
and I’ve had 30 years and more in which to want.
I am such a wanting thing.
Wanting movement and fresh air
against my naked cheeks,
wanting an open hug
a fresh latte served in a mug
which a thousand other lips have touched before.
How indecorous, how innocent,
those things which we all used to want
without knowing what it was that we were
asking for.
To touch the world
in all its sharp unseemly edges
to be pricked
to live.
You.
I have come to find,
in my few months of manufactured life,
that the world which you recall so fondly
is not how you remember it.
The latte was far too bitter, and there
was distance in the tightest hug.
The truest complications are not in the blood,
but what comes after
when we two finally meet
and your old life swallows you whole
but nothing is entirely the same.
Then the years fade away as fast as breathing
until you look around and wonder
how it is that somehow you remain
completely eaten up with longing.
Rebecca Wener is a therapist and poet living in Denver, Colorado. She loves cats and finding new and obscure languages to learn. Her work has been featured in Beyond Words, Poetry Quarterly and Better than Starbucks.