Olivia Kingery
In quarantine
thousands of us, millions of us,
sing the same song with lips
partly parted, touching softly,
then tongue, to wet an appetite
we have no idea how to satiate.
It tastes like fear, in quarantine,
in a lockdown felt in the marrow
of our bones. It tastes like grief,
the loss of this and that and finding
time is a thing which does not pause.
Here, in the silence of my muscles
moving against each other, the sun
is still blazing and the birds still call,
maybe even louder, say hey, look
at the quiet, look at the quiet;
and the lips reply, the quiet, the quiet.
Olivia Kingery is a farmer of plants and words in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. She is an MFA candidate at Northern Michigan University where she reads for Passages North. When not writing, she is in the woods with her Chihuahua and Saint Bernard.
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