I wrote this poem following the death of my best friend during Covid lockdown where those two catastrophes intertwined. We all became captives in a sense, though hers was a function of not only the pandemic, but also terminal illness. I hope the poem expresses both the suffocation of that period, as well as a reverence for life fully lived, which she had, and which those experiences placed into new perspective for me.
Sarah Wetzel is the author of three poetry collections, most recently The Davids Inside David from Terrapin Books. Sarah is also Publisher/Editor at Saturnalia Books, and a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.
