The Vaccine
The Covid-19 vaccine made its long-anticipated debut last month. Dr. Elizabeth Mitchell (@emitchel), an emergency department physician at Boston Medical Center, captured her relief in this poem, “The Vaccine.” “The hardest thing about the pandemic,” she told us, was the first surge: “not enough PPE, really sick and dying patients and just plain fear and anxiety.” Her poem is one of the first representations of this new moment of hope, and we are privileged to post it here.
The Vaccine
By Elizabeth Mitchell
The jab of the needle
an intake of
breath
then the slow
aching
spread
into the muscle belly.
I want to laugh
and cry
and roll on the ground
in relief. sweet
sweet sweet
relief.
