“Quarantine,” by Leslie Contreras Schwartz (Poetry ’11)

Poetry graduate Leslie Contreras Schwartz recently had an essay featured in Luna Luna. Read an excerpt of “Quarantine” below:

Quarantine

The lights in the bedroom flickered off and on. I lay in our bed listening to a heavy thumping coming from somewhere, quickening. In a half-dream, I created the idea of walking to the door and shouting, Who’s doing that? Even the thought of it was tiring, and I rolled over with eyes half-closed, lucid enough to be afraid to sleep but longing for it with the same urgency I longed to take a deep breathe without pain, or to be able to sit up with my lungs feeling crushed. I tried to fill my thoughts without something other than the every second of half-breathing, the crushing and stupor.

Was the sound growing near? Was it a foot banging a door, my daughter running circles in the living room, feet pounding in a rhythmic pattern? Was it the neighbor at some task again that required loud repetitive pounding and screeching? The questions were something to latch onto in my mind. I entertained them.

A slit of light broke from the bedroom door and my son crawled in beside me, wrapping his small limbs around mine underneath the coat of blankets. He was whispering but I could not hear because of the thumping. Who is doing that, I said. I slept.

My husband woke me to feed me soup, water from a straw. I sat up in bed, the room bluing. Our five-year-old was jumping on the bed, adding a beat to the drumming that started again when I opened my eyes (though I was sure I heard it in my sleep). It had been weeks since I’d left either the bed, or the couch, laying, blinking, and when awake, staring through the window, at a wall, at one of the children’s faces. Breath came as if through a tiny sieve, which I gulped in small pockets. You’re here, the doctor said this morning on the phone. Be grateful. So the air like fish eggs, like the meager rationing in the form of pills. Sucking, coughing, my chest strained and ready to snap. Nebulizer hush and burr. Inhaler sip. Eight more times. Times seven. Again. Times sixty days.

Read the rest of this essay here: http://www.lunalunamagazine.com/blog/leslie-contreras-schwartz