I pieced together my home
state today, in a map of New England
broken into a thousand pieces before me.
I found my unmarked town
on Buzzards Bay, located Hyannis,
Falmouth, New Bedford—long ago rivals
in high school track, popped Woods Hole
and the islands into place,
laid out the Whaling Museum’s mighty blue
recalled from so many school trips,
crooked the arm of the Cape
and made a fist of Provincetown.
From my quarantined living room
in New Jersey, I could have traveled
anywhere as I put together a world
by my back window, yet I chose
to go home.
Ann E. Wallace, a poet and essayist from New Jersey, has been documenting her experience with long COVID since March 2020 when she and her daughter fell ill. She is author of Counting by Sevens (Main Street Rag) and has previously published work in Eunoia Review, as well as in many other outlets, including HuffPost, Snapdragon, Crack the Spine, and Wordgathering. She can be found online at https://www.annwallacephd.com and on Twitter: @annwlace409.
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