After the Flu
stacy rollins
After I kill this flu, I’m going to
put on my Doc Martens from 1993
I’m going to speedwalk in the February sun
down 8th Ave. and across Prospect Park West
I know the overnight snow has mattress padded
the entire park and the snowmen are gleaming
sunmen in a slippery, crystalline zenith, just as the temp-
erature tops 40, an¡d I’ll be stomping with my flu-killing
determination through the slush puddles to knock them out, too
I’m going to inhale the glowing chill deep until my aching alveoli
turn into birthday balloons and carry me to the top of the hill
where the six-year olds are revving up their dinky sleds
and I am going to fall, and laugh, because six inches of snow
beginning a fever of its own has so much give, it is weak and glorious
and dying off rapidly. A dad drapes a black windbreaker
around a snowman. It’s not even cold anymore. He’s making it worse
for the snowman. I’ll come home with shoes that went for a winter swim
and sweat under my fuzzy hat. I’m going to bring this all home
to a roaring dishwasher and ordinary things
with photographs of light that magnifies light
through clawed branches of gray trees pained with arthritic
knots like hands of a crone. I’ll come home holding an invisible
string up to the lonesome sun working overtime
to lift me up through the creaking rafters
of the old sky while a block of ice dislodging from the brace
of itself plunks from the roof of my brownstone
to the sidewalk, just missing the tail of a Dachshund.
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