Social Distancing Poem by Peter van Egeren
Photograph by artofinvi
Social Distancing
“Unwise to leave Vienna at this time.”
This is how her message read.
His heart ached at the distance,
and the shattered prospect of her visit.
His medical studies in Edinburgh,
and plain common sense,
assured him of her truth.
It is unwise to travel during a pandemic.
The planes were in the air,
but there was much afloat.
Caution must prevail.
All was as it needed to be, he thought.
Or was it?
While love and wisdom are seldom co-conspirators,
technology makes them foes.
Her message contained no suggestion of regret.
It lay naked like a corpse,
no emotional content.
No salutatory Bussi, a painful omission,
an Austrian slight akin to dropping a cigarette butt
in a lover’s coffee when leaving a cafe.
The science of emojis emerged before his eyes,
like anatomy from the books he absorbed
into the wee hours
of the lonely Lothian nights.
There emerged in him a sensitivity to nuance,
but she left nothing to be examined,
nothing to dissect.
He understood her coyness, their love so young and new.
With this message, she demanded distance,
he concluded.
Something in her had changed.
Something in her environment had changed.
No mind is capable of creating horror
better than the mind of a jilted lover.
The villain was a peacock,
and the peacock’s name was Dylan,
a bloviating fool if ever he knew one.
If she wanted that stupid, rich fop,
she could have him.
She would rue the day
that she kicked this butterfly out of her web
to feast on fattened flies.
“Love you” heart emoji was her second message
five hours later.
He would not see it for two days
and a bottle of Polish vodka later.