Pickup Poem Day 17

K95 Mask

Damn the tests. Put aside the confidence

and tolerance of measure in these tissue

thin strata, layered like hot hors d'oeuvres

at a wedding swill. You and I were meant

to be the five per cent of breath that escapes,

hangs in air a moment in the diamond hope

of sowing a next generation. How did we leave?

I imagine us as the point

of two plosives with feeling behind them—

this exhausted throat, saying Please, please,

over and over.