It... Poem by anais vionet

It...

I've got it - woot!
Well, we've (Lisa and I) have it. The Covid.
After living carefully serpentine lives - for the last half decade - we both have it.

Lisa started feeling punky Friday night, after work. Saturday she had some sniffles and we both took Covid tests, coming up positive. By Saturday evening, Lisa was laid-low and looked a flu-like death warmed over. I am asymptomatic, not a cough or a sneeze, although I do feel an occasional little dizziness.

'I hate you, ' she said, in a moment of clarity and focus. I think it's a temporary, fever-driven hatred - but time will tell.

Charles, our escort and consigliere, goes everywhere we go, didn't catch it. He's become our designated shopper. When I asked Lisa if she wanted anything she said, 'Orange juice and mango gelato.' Twenty minutes later, Charles handed me (masked and gloved through a door crack) two bags - one contained a large, extra-pulp orange juice, the other had a $70 selection of various ice creams, gelatos and ice cream sandwiches (the receipt was still in the bag.)

Saturday night, I texted my mom, who's spending yet another summer overseas with 'Doctors Without Borders.' She Face Timed me not two minutes later, from somewhere in Poland, or Ukraine - 4,170 miles away - and after checking I was ok - delivered what I think of as 'family infectious disease lecture #17, full of 'If you're going to be a doctors' and 'You know betters.' I love technology.

My sister Annick, a doctor herself, was knocking at our (her) door twenty minutes later. She gave us both mini-physicals and left a list of things to periodically check (like blood-oxygen levels) as well as two boxes of Paxlovid, 'Do NOT take this unless or until I tell you to.'
We all have Apple watches and are now walkie-talkie connected for even more instant communication.

Rebecca, my fellowship surgeon, was, of course, very sympathetic and supportive when I told her but displayed a careful, verbal, clinical distance - addressing me as 'Mz Vionet' once - instead of her usual 'Anais' or the even more usual 'excuse me.'

I've been promoted to nurse, cook and bottle washer - but the ice cream, topped with a little Bailey's Irish liqueur, is spectacular.

Anyway, here we are. We've finally joined the Covid parade. I guess Covid isn't over after all.
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Webster: Consigliere: a trusted adviser or counselor.

It...
Monday, July 10, 2023
Topic(s) of this poem: healing,family,doctors,teen,humor
COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Denis Mair 17 July 2023

This demonstrates that Covid's virulance was tamed by all the hapless bodies who hosted it during its most aggressive phase. It got shunted into the blind alleys of lockdown. Either it had to learn to get along with the body, or it would perish along with its isolated hosts.

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Denis Mair 17 July 2023

Who knows? Now that it has been de-fanged, the body's immune system may tame it for use as a training virus or tool. It will become one of the genome's multitude of tolerated hangers-on.

0 0 Reply
Rajan T Renganathan 10 July 2023

Covid is gone and will never return only we are doing parade cursing it.

0 0 Reply
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anais vionet

anais vionet

Paris, France
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