THE VIRUS
At this particular time, on this ledge
where I stopped to catch my breath,
no tragedy comes without reminders.
This is not my first state of siege,
not even my first global emergency
if you still count the rest of the world.
My body remembers this kind of rustling
in the grass, the way it fidgets like a lamb
in a barn during a storm.
I know the taste, sour and steely,
of how things are likely to turn out,
people who did not need to die will die,
some politician will get away with murder,
some people’s lives will change forever.
Where I’m from we are practiced in
scattering the ashes but still learning
how to pick up the pieces.
A fair amount will be repaired,
the rest will never be the same,
some of us will not cry until much later
when we least expect it.
Glint Literary Journal 