The Funeral Director, Spring 2020

He bites his lower lip, clasps
his hands behind his back, and steels
his legs into a wide stance, knowing

one brimming tear holds power to unleash
the others welled up and waiting.
It used to be the unexpected

that disrupted his balance—the new suit
purchased two sizes too small
for a teen struck down in the road,

the calm words of a mother
to her grown child laid out before her, speaking
of tomorrow as if nothing had changed,

or the collapse and despair of another
who knew everything had.
But in these endless days

of horror when illness envelops
and makes a home in our city—
when the morgues are overflowing,

and the bodies are stacked and held
three weeks for burial, when the caskets
are closed and families could not kiss

or send off their dear beloved—he works
in solitude, carrying the grief of legions.
He removes the tubes and bathes

the bodies of the deceased, dresses
each one in clothing brought
by loved ones, set their hands

and combs their hair, placing them
in caskets their families would never open,
and the mounting waves of sorrow

swell high and higher, until they crest
and the rushing waters wash,
and wash, and wash over him.

*

Emergency Room Visits in March 2020

When they turned the pediatric emergency room
into a COVID triage area in the early days,

decals of monkeys with curling tails,
loping elephants, spotted giraffes grazed

the walls. The doctor who took my vitals
was tired, hadn’t seen his kids in two weeks.

The hospital prepared to admit me, then sent
me home after two rounds of bloodwork and testing.

They needed the bed. Three days later, I returned
on my 50th birthday, barely conscious,

bypassed the children’s unit, and was wheeled inside
where the serious cases were handled.

The aide hesitated to help me onto the bed,
offered a gloved hand only after I pleaded,

and my new doctor would not step inside
my curtain. He poked his masked face

through the gap in the fabric to ask
my cell number. He wrote it on a Post-it

and backed away like I was a caged tiger.
I never received his call.

*

Cleared to Leave

My face is pale and splotchy when my ex-
husband picks me up at home, like death
blooms within me. The weather, April

dreary. Jason drives me to the emergency room—
my third hospital this spring. I wear a pink
woolen cap, loop my oxygen line around my ears,

tuck it behind my glasses, hook the cannula
under my nose. I lug the tank inside
and sit in a folding chair in the makeshift

waiting room—the department had been under
renovation when the virus hit. The work
on the building has stopped. The work of saving

lives has not. My doctor called ahead
for a lung scan. The ER doctor takes my blood
and vitals but never orders the scan.

I rest in my thin, faded hospital gown,
in the overwhelmed ER, so much like the others,
each one unique in its chaos. Cleared to leave,

I dress slowly, layer by layer—shirt and pants,
sweater, jacket, hat. Untethered from the hospital
oxygen, reconnected to my emergency supply

from home, I hoist the tank. Alone, undirected,
I stumble through the halls, carry my heavy load,
search for the unmarked exit. Outside in the cold,

I realize I left my glasses on my hospital bed.
They are gone. Per pandemic policy, thrown
into the trash with all other personal effects.

*

Ann E. Wallace is Poet Laureate Emeritus of Jersey City, New Jersey and host of The WildStory: A Podcast of Poetry and Plants. Her second poetry collection, Days of Grace and Silence: A Chronicle of COVID’s Long Haul, was published by Kelsay Books in 2024. She has previously published work in ONE ART, Thimble, Halfway Down the Stairs, Gyroscope Review, Wordgathering, and other journals. You can follow her online at AnnWallacePhD.com and on Instagram @annwallace409.