I’m Clara MacPherson, a sixteen-year-old sophomore student at Roosevelt High School. COVID-19 has made it difficult to see my friends and just have a normal year. It has been draining just to survive. Here is my poem:
Dear Vaccine, may you restore
the warmth of embrace to our lives.
One small prick and a thick shield
can begin to grow in our bodies.
Bodies that have yearned for the touch
of a grandchild and daughter.
Vaccine, please grace us with life
even more vivid and brilliant than before.
I want to live, vaccine,
not just survive.
Surviving is a chore so draining
your innermost will to move and grow deteriorates,
rotting in a chrysalis of isolation.
We are hanging by a thread, vaccine.
But now, oh joy, you are here.