Ann E. Wallace is writing poetry and essays as she recovers from long-haul COVID at home in Jersey City, New Jersey. Her poetry collection, Counting by Sevens, is available from Main Street Rag (2019), and she has published work in Huffington Post, Crack the Spine, and Snapdragon, as well as Clementine Unbound and other journals. Her work can be found at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Twitter @annwlace409.
An Abundance
This winter spring summer
has been a long haul of suffering
and silence, of sickbed days on repeat,
with life pared down to its essence,
my attention honed on the fragile act
of breathing in, then out, for four beats,
in, out, speaking, cooking, bathing
hefty efforts to be weighed each day,
any one jettisoned for the other.
Yet amid the scarcity, an abundance
has flowed to my small and quiet place
within this solitary house of quarantine.
Clementine Unbound 