Masked by Tara Menon

Masked

Going outdoors for the first time after surgery,
I don’t marvel at the pretty neighborhood
nor the flanking snow nor nature at her starkest,
but at the restorative power of fresh air
combined with walking.

No one sees a woman recovering from surgery,
only a walker ambling with her husband by her side
to catch her if she falls.
He has been gallantly saving her
from her mistakes ever since they married.

No one reads her thoughts
that the birthday she reached
could have been her last or penultimate one.
A surrealistic feeling,
though she intuited she’d be diagnosed
with breast cancer one day,
especially in the terrain of her sixties.
The snowscape feels unreal like it does
when it blankets the area every year.

We walk without masks, our faces masks.
No one knows the worries others carry,
but everyone loves to say, Hi, how are you?
A kindness passed from stranger to stranger.

*

Tara Menon is an Indian-American writer based in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is a two-time finalist for the Willow Run Poetry Book Award. Her latest poems are forthcoming or have appeared in ““Blue Heron Review,” “Grey Sparrow Journal,” “AMPLIFY” (anthology published by Sheila-Na-Gig), “ArLiJo,” and “The Queens Review.”