Julie Weiss
Coronaversary, April 12th, 2020
For Olga
Happy anniversary, mi amor, the words I blow
across your pillow like fairy dust every year
to wake you. Today is different. A voice,
quite unlike my own, comes pounding across
my heart and asks: How many people do you think
died yesterday? Our silences fall across each other,
the moment pulled inside out when the children
crawl under our covers, giggling. They’re too
excited about the Easter eggs hidden around
our home to notice the sorrow rumpled
between us. Last year, when your parents
could cup their faces without fear of contagion
and the metro air wasn’t thick with the spirits
of past riders, we indulged in lunch for two
in downtown Madrid, toasted to our marriage
above bustling streets, held hands, unaware
that skin fused in the ardor of an afternoon walk
would one day generate more than electricity.
Today we coax our children into the kitchen
with the promise of chocolate and cartoons.
We have two minutes, and I want to wrap
our love in a metaphor, striking and timeless.
Instead, I clap for us, howl for our family.
I say: We’re lucky to be alive.
—Submitted on 06/18/2020
Julie Weiss‘s poems appear in Praxis Magazine, ArLiJo, Anti-Heroin Chic, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Sky Island Journal, and other journals, as well as in the anthologies Unsheathed: 24 Contemporary Poets Take Up The Knife (Kingly Street Press, 2019), edited by Betsy Mars; and Is It Hot In Here Or Is It Just Me?: Women Over Forty Write On Aging (Social Justice Anthologies, 2019), edited by Nina Padolf, Janette Schafer, Wendy Scott, and Holly Spencer. Originally from California, Weiss teaches English in Spain, where she lives with her wife and two children. Online at julieweiss2001.wordpress.com/ and on Twitter @colourofpoetry.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.