With the world on a lockdown, there is a lot of time to think; no time for socializing, nowhere to get a drink. Some, risking their lives at work with people dying at their feet, tucked away in body bags; wind heralding a thousand deaths and clinical suicides - every hour. Rounded up or down to a pleasingly symmetrical number. Prescription drugs, infomercials, images of families and foliage, and a pleasantly vapid disclaimer of collateral sufferings, followed by a drone shot to some unnamed music. Blue and white PPE Kits, everything smells of caustic chemicals; dogs chewing through their hair, for a morsel. Prisoners of our own making, of the horror, the invisible death, the stench of blood and sweat. All that talk of apocalypse sounds exquisite, flames twisting skywards, faces masked, as if some horrid holiday has commenced. Everyone’s in a mask, N95, blue, black, floral, abstract - endless designs, a pallid veil of dancing shadows, an impending demise. Is there a fury in the bleakness of the after-death, a separation beyond anxiety, hopelessness beyond the last farewell?
She asked - "Is this the end?”, and I said, “press your beautiful bones against my ribs, lay your mire upon my silt, as we stumble to a halt, tangle your rictus into my thinning hair and chew out a keepsake for the archeologists to carefully sweep a brush across someday. “ You laugh, and we leave it that.
Each morning we inch a bit closer to the bottom of the valley. Each morning becomes more arresting, and every evening we laugh ourselves to stupefaction, to an anthem of prerecorded applause as the news delivers a thousand clockwork deaths and suicides, an hour, a slow collapse.
The phone pings. Update! It is hard to see the pain in a selfie. Another smile in the sunshine pretending everything is 'fine'. Aren’t you getting sick of the grind? But we’ve all adjusted, shifted things. Persisting here day by day, the end of times delayed, yet again. Seems simplistic at first glance. Guess, it’s all up to chance.
Maybe the sun will eat the world today...