NaPoWriMo 2024 Day 20

Today is the last “official” day of isolation for me. Yes I could have gone out after day 5 (and I did get some needed groceries, masked and ducking in and out of the store one day). I am advised my tests can be positive for three months! I am advised, rather too mildly I think, to wear a mask in crowded places. I think we’ve lost track of what we’re doing here but I’m not an advisor to the CDC etc.

Today is also day twenty of NaPoWriMo and the prompt today was “write a poem that recounts a historical event. In writing your poem, you could draw on your memory, encyclopedias, history books, or primary documents.” I do sometimes tell people about how I went to a lecture in early March 2020 and felt iffy, had a headache and then was sick in bed for two weeks. Luckily I stayed home. And when I went to the doctor on the twelth to get a note to return to work he said, well, we’ll never know for sure… And right after that, the world shut down. And I never went back to my workplace to work.

March 6, 2020

I hope you are well.
Tuesday night I went to a lecture
it turned out to be surprisingly a bust
but I had a headache. Maybe it was me.
I drove home wishing I was home.
I crawled into bed and woke up sick.

I slept most of today. I have a cough
and think I have a fever but I
can’t find my thermometer
just the one I use for the cats.
So I went back to bed.

A few days later and the radio voice
says there’s some sickness
filling hospitals and they don’t know.
I stayed home trying to breathe
I fixed a thermos of hot tea and
I’m crawling back into bed
trying not to cough
the news says stay home.

Hope you are well. Be safe.