Francine Rubin
Pandemic Insomnia
I don’t want to miss anything.
Tiny scrap of news.
Slightest virus symptom.
Family on video chat, not yet embraceable.
Husband asleep.
Baby in the next room
making snow angels in his sleep,
waking with new sounds in his mouth,
new gestures with his perfect infant body.
My beautiful town, which I’ll stroll
in the cool rainless morning,
socially distant neighbors waving
flanked by teddy bears in windows.
The occasional child zooming
too closely on a bicycle, forgetting
about distance.
How good we have it.
How much we have to lose.
—Submitted on 04/04/2020
Francine Rubin is the author of If You’re Talking to Me: Commuter Poems (dancing girl press, 2019), City Songs (Blue Lyra Press, 2016), and Geometries (Finishing Line Press, 2012). Her poems have appeared in Faultline, Red Flag Poetry, The Stillwater Review, and Tule Review, among other journals. She is online at francinerubin.tumblr.com.
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