A cloak hid her weight

Or she hoped it did as

She scoured second hand bookshops and

Oxfam for

Thirty-five years of books that she

Never let go.

You can imagine that lonely bungalow, the kind

They clear out on TV, with explanations from a

Psychologist, so when

Annie broke her hip she had to watch

Other patients during visiting hours and

Although she seemed on the mend,

Being both obese and diabetic

She was easy meat when the

Virus came visiting.

The book she was trying to read before it got

Censored by intensive care was, aptly enough,

A journal of the Plague Year, or Memorials of the

Great Pestilence in London in 1665 by

Daniel Defoe,

BestSeller Library edition, 1959, price

Three shillings and sixpence

(Somehow, she'd hung on to her sense of humour).

Understandably they burned it

The only book Annie ever let go