New Normal

The timbre of my snot wanes
And relapses over dragging weeks
Of illness.

I never give much thought
To mortality until
I need an antibiotic
At the end of their golden age.

I love the materiality of paper,
The heavy, composite, recycled
Kind with visible interwoven fibers
Holding it all together.

Letting this winter kill me
Is unimaginable, but I am
In a fragile way. My coddled
Body explodes in slow motion, ejecting
Captured cells, incubating infection,
Diaphragm warm to the touch.

This is forever the year when I was married,
When I finished my first bout of grad school,
When another plague thins out the herd,
When I am finally too weak to keep up.

The highway roar out my window does not
Groan or waver like I do, the people simply
Have shit to do. The fabric of the public is
Remarkably immune to showing concern
About this case-by-case kind of meltdown.

By: Will Washburn

Will Washburn is a poet from Charlotte, NC who is currently obsessed with agency, complicity, environmental meltdown, inheriting guilt, and life at the heart of an empire. He also sings and plays guitar in a rock band called Big Backyard, and he cherishes his days with his wife and their pair of devious tabby cats.