Self-Portrait of an INTJ reunited with inner-resilient-child in late March 2020

VANESSA COUTO JOHNSON

April 1, 2020

I am in touch with my inner only-child.

I loathe the bored, of how can they be, of how they lack their inner loaf.

I’d rather you admit to fear than say you’re bored: tainted complaint.

I am an asshole, like everyone is an opinion.

A self-suffice I refrigerate and I’d rather you not

increase your frequency of asking how I am

relative to our previous society. I bin how I’ve been.

I was lonelier two weeks ago, feeling like I was waiting for something

since daylight savings started the week. Having to out, having not finished

what I wanted, having to face and shave. Getting to stay in lets me ooze.

I am a three-personed odd: ingress, regress, aggress. 

Look, this is a confessional poem as well as a get-off-my-yawn poem—I’m not

interested in your first-world wants, your crowded while-aways 

now closed. I beg for your adaptation. What I enjoy 

about not having to get in front of you each day is that I don’t 

have to be as concerned with if you like me. Now, I can self-approve. 

I am accessing something I find nostalgic: my time.

Peace, room to trim my to-do list, I know I’m privileged (very!) to strategy

all I can for my students. 

I am the child-free sage on the mountain with wifi.

The one who gets to have her remote teaching zapped worldwide.

But I am also an everyone, like a pinholed onion

that does hope your ass is okay. Just let me hermit, though? 

because this layer is how I’ll thrive through this, with my inner-child’s 

mistimed, revived hand-washing passion, 

now to soap away viral leviathan.

VANESSA COUTO JOHNSON is the author of Pungent dins concentric, her first full-length book (Tolsun Books, 2018), and three chapbooks. Dialogist, Foundry, Softblow, Thrush, and other journals and anthologies have published her poetry. She teaches at Texas State University (since 2014), as well as Trinity University this academic year.