Queue

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The numbers are climbing. People are dying. Old and young, alike. Everyone knows someone who is gasping for their next breath. Because the virus knows no difference of age, wealth, status. It just knows to invade a body. And when you get fever and chills, a cough, maybe pneumonia, unable to breathe… you can still make it… Maybe you will recover at home. Maybe you will need medical care. Perhaps, oxygen support. But such great are the numbers that hospitals are overrun. Crematoriums too.

And in the grip of a devastating second Covid wave, there are those, who are profiteering, making money off the dying. Extracting a pound of flesh. Scooping up the coins scattered around the dead. The irony is, what guarantee is there that they will survive to enjoy their ill-begotten money? Who guarantees that a number won’t become a name?

Queue

The nights are / the worst
When / the silence of the curfew
Is pierced / by the banshee wail
Of white coffins / their
Blue lights / announcing
The presence of the / dying
Encased inside / as they
Race / on deserted roads
But / no hospitals are
Taking them in / no beds
Mostly / but no oxygen
Either / and definitely no
Hope / as
People die waiting /
To suck in the next breath / in
Serpentine queues.

Jyotsna Atre

This post is a part of the Blogchatter A2Z challenge