she adored creatures she could roll on their backs,

   pet their bellies until they fell asleep, horny toads, hedgehogs, and husbands;

      she could teach anyone how to love, it was her way, the gentleness in her hands,

          she’d come early to the clinic to pick me up and watch me with the kids.

no doubt, she could dry their tears better than I,

    I had only fifteen minutes each, but she had a lifetime, holding them in her hug, rinsing away surprises, even their parents were thunderstruck, especially those of the special ones;

       until one of them rubbed their nose in her anorak.

‘it’s just a cold,’ she promised, coughed, sniffled, grabbed her chest,

    the fever brought her down, we slept separate after that.

  ‘no hospitals, please,’ she begged,

  after that, she didn’t pick me up; I took the train home, walked in the dread,

      her skin already cold, the bed, like her, unmade.

 in the waiting room they whispered, ‘his wife’ and ‘corona nineteen,’

    some rose and left, my grief measured in the gaps in my schedule,

      places to hide in, cry in, until the gaps became my day,

  and masked men gave me a ‘sabbatical’ like I was the criminal!

 the streets mirror my heart, drained of life, birds forgot how to sing,

    bats screech in the sky, hoarding insects like people in stores over bread,

       I am depraved, sitting on a park bench in the middle of the day,

     folks stare at the broken down thing I have become.

 a fortnight of isolation passed, and I am invited back, deemed worthy...

   ‘where’s the nice Lady?’ Keely asked, my smile brimming tears,

  ‘she is a queen now, sugar’ I muster, ‘crowned by the nineteenth emperor of Wuhan.’

     ‘Wow! I knew she was too good for us,’

             and Keely is right; because I just want to roll on my back and be petted asleep,

                                            hope for it, one more time.