by Michele Mekel
These hands, they’re tools.
They’ve created art and written poetry.
They’ve brewed tea and dried fallen tears.
These hands, they’re barometers of emotions within.
They’ve formed fists and made love.
They’ve fidgeted in stressful moments and been still in quiet ones.
These hands, they’re conduits across the individual divide.
They’ve been held tightly and pushed away roughly.
They’ve been greeted palm to palm in celebration and demonstrated profane disaffection.
But, now, these hands, they’re a pariah in pandemic days.
They’re socially shunned and brutally scrubbed with regularity.
They’re in isolation and deprived of human connection.
These hands, they’re like me in the age of COVID-19.
Living in Happy Valley, Michele Mekel wears many hats of her choosing: writer and editor; educator and bioethicist; poetess and creatrix; cat herder and chief can opener; witch and woman; and, above all, human. Her work has appeared in
various academic and creative publications, including having her poetry selected and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. She is also a co-principal investigator for the Viral Imaginations: COVID-19 project, viralimaginations.psu.edu. Michele can be found on Instagram @ShaktiEnergy.
