Caught between Floating and Drowning, a reflection about poetry, memory and adapting to chaos by Mikayla Brockmeyer

A state of flux. The COVID-19 pandemic has induced a state of “How will I react to _____?” Listlessness and emotional exhaustion bring about feelings of isolation and longing to be somewhere we are not. Yet, in learning to modify behaviors, collaborations have emerged.

In the opening couplet to Sheila Kelly’s poem entitled “Breathe” (Fall 2017 Intima). she sets the stage and introduces a poignant metaphor, depicting calmness, yet incertitude.

You are floating in the swimming pool again.
Your childhood best friend rises like prayer.

“Breathe” was penned well before the current pandemic, yet the feelings of serenity and safety one day, and panic the next, expressed are relevant today. Using a second-person narrative, she paints a vivid picture of a disjointed home life, sifting through old, painful memories. In the poem, the main character is catapulting between chaos and “floating in the swimming pool.” At the end, I interpret a sense of adaptation from the character that leaves a residue of hope.

In my essay “Turbulent Undertow” (Fall 2020 Intima), parallel feelings are grappled with, as I describe a surfing attempt, and later, my experience as a hospitalist scribe. Woven together, I write about two near-drowning experiences: on surfing and on caring for patients with COVID-19. The best friend in Sheila Kelly’s poem encourages the main character to put on her old swimsuit when distressed. After a long series of days working with the hospitalist, I, too, wanted to offer solace. But instead, all I could offer was “Glad you’re okay,” a phrase that has reverberated through my brain ever since I first heard it myself.

Riding metaphorical surfboards together and finding ways to float in metaphorical swimming pools may not be the best solution to curb the emotional toll of the pandemic. However, validation and shared human connection serve as two ways to avoid possible drowning amidst the pandemic waves.

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Mikayla Brockmeyer

Mikayla Brockmeyer is a first year osteopathic medical student at Des Moines University in Des Moines, Iowa. She began working as a hospitalist scribe in 2018, while she was enrolled in the Master of Science in Biomedical Sciences program at Des Moines University. She successfully defended her thesis in 2019 and spent her gap year scribing full time. This is her first time showcasing her storytelling abilities in a public arena. Her non-fiction essay “Turbulent Undertow” appears in the Fall 2020 Intima.

‘New Normal. Precious Normal.’ A Reflection about Loss and Love in the Wake of COVID-19 by poet Sophia Wilson

In her poem “Oxygen” (Fall 2018 Intima), Hollis Kurman captures how poignantly the proximity of illness or death can alter the way we view others and the world:

‘…he lies
wordless, feet stilled and arms bound.
His glasses have been removed,
His pockets emptied. A life fills

those pockets, the tokens and coins,
Addresses and appointments. Cash, still.
Hints of barter expired.’

Currently, here in New Zealand, the combination of a small population (total five million), and nationwide lockdown has flattened the initial COVID-19 curve. There have been no new cases for most days over the past two weeks. The country has re-opened schools and businesses. Domestic tourism is being aggressively encouraged. There’s been a rush on fast food. Traffic is back on the roads in force.

Simultaneously, there is a risk of complacency and resurgence of infection.

It’s almost hard to recall, how we felt at the beginning of lockdown. As circumstances brought about by the pandemic change rapidly, so too, do our emotions and responses.

While the focus in New Zealand is on a return to ‘normal,’ there is also a sense of the importance of moving forward differently, in particularly with regards to the environment and each another. Today, as it happens, is not only the release date of the Spring 2020 Intima, in which my poem “Don’t Leave” appears, but the day my husband (an essential worker and subject of the poem), moves back into our home—a cause for celebration. It’s also the day I receive news that a close relative is intubated in intensive care in a Sydney hospital, with suspected COVID-19 infection. He’s forty-five years old with no comorbidity. Our loved one was well when we spoke to him last week. It’s an acute reminder the nightmare is not over.

What wouldn’t we do to keep those we love safe and close? As Hollis Kurman so movingly writes:

‘Wait, we’ve not yet

spoken today; wait, take my oxygen;
wait, the policeman called you “sir” in the
middle of the night, carrying you back to bed.
Wait.’

Both our poems express an acute appreciation for the preciousness of other people, those so familiar to us we have come to take them for granted. In my case, as for so many of us right now,  this heightened appreciation has been catalysed forcefully by COVID-19.  I hope that, like the quiet, paused moments of lockdown, it does not slip away amid the hustle and bustle of a return to ‘normality.’

Thank you, Hollis. Your poem will stay with me. And thank you, Intima, for all the brave and inspiring work you support and share.

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Sophia Wilson is a New Zealand-based writer and mother of three with a background in arts, medicine and psychiatry. Her work has appeared in StylusLit, Not Very Quiet, Ars Medica, Hektoen International, Intima, Distāntia off topic poetics, NZ Poetry Shelf, Poems in the Waiting Room, Corpus, The Otago Daily Times and elsewhere. In 2019 the manuscript for her first children’s novel, “The Guardian of Whale Mountain” was selected in the top ten for the Green Stories Competition (UK). She was shortlisted for the Takahē Monica Taylor Prize and a finalist in the Robert Burns Poetry Competition. She was winner of the 2020 International Writers Workshop Flash Fiction Competition and is the recipient of a 2020 Creative New Zealand grant.