Repetition Poem by Chen-ou Liu

A Tanka Sequence, Fifty-Second Entry, Coronavirus Poetry Diary, written for Søren Kierkegaard who called his melancholy "the most faithful mistress I have known."

death toll rising...
in illness and in fear
alone
with my drunken shadow
apart together

quarantined for weeks
with my drunken shadow
in the attic
I tanka-barricade the door
to my mistress's chamber

in dim light
my quarantined mind races
back and forth
between the old and new normal:
this world of masked faces