Incorrigible/Us

A local politician

Spewing venom

Before distributing 

Party-logo printed masks among people . . .

Someone

Mortifyingly

Trying hard to stop

Her baby from

Hitting the live camera . . .

Some random guy

Shouting

"Am I audible?"

In a webinar

Blabbering nothing but empty words . . .

Local administration

Seizing a dilapidated shop

Malls

Beaming with people . . .

The weary participants

Trying hard to re-connect . . .

The unmuted

Mute students

Desperate for their attendance . . .

An institutional head

Issuing written order

Against the absent faculty

Wheezing at home . . .

A mask and gloves wearing man

Counting our sins 

On a sanitized rosary

Boasting about God . . .

We are

As we were 

Before the pandemic -

Stubborn.

Ignorant.

Selfish.

Unsympathetic.

in absentia

Now that you are gone,

I rest in your bed.

I sit in the places I remember you sitting

Have offered prayers

I fiddle with your leftover things.

Clean your room.

(Dis)arrange things.

I do all the things

Unecessary -

Teaching myself failed lessons everyday

Each moment on

How not to miss you.

I then exit the room,

Leaving the door ajar

For you

To return and retort:

Has anyone been in my room?

I can't find my things!

Thus teaching you lessons

Every time

On how not to leave me

Alone.

Till then,

Things will go missing.

Thereafter,

Words.

Microcosm

These days

Pain feels non-degradable 

Like a polythene bag filled with trash

Lying at the bottom of an ocean

Not knowing how it got there

In the first place.

Enduring that pain

Feels like it being photographed

For documentary purposes

To showcase the degradation of humanity.

Hiding that pain? -

Hiding it 

Feels like the ocean itself

Stashing the trash inside -

Not knowing where it ends or begins.

Right now,

How Alice weeps a pool of tears?

- Makes sense.