You could hear it in the lull between gunfire and prayer —
mosquitoes whining, radios half-silent, red dirt baked into the last meal,
Plastic sheeting flapping over beds where children once giggled,
a nursery recast as a field hospital, hope stitched to a rusted IV wheel,
The smell of bleach and chlorine rides the harmattan,
cutting through the mango trees, leaves trembling at every passing truck,
The white-suited ghosts arrive in convoys, eyes hidden by fogged goggles,
faces alien as the plague itself, shunned by faith and luck,
Whole families gone in a week, mattresses burned under dawn,
handprints on tin shacks now faded by rain,
Grandmothers whisper to photos, fathers drink in silence,
babies swaddled in secrets no song can explain,
No mourning allowed, no ritual, no keening under the moon,
the drums silenced by cordons—music replaced with a siren’s wail,
Villages empty but for the goats, the chickens, the shadow of what it meant to live
and love, quarantine tape snapping in the wind, brittle and pale.
Neighbor fears neighbor, and lovers cross the road,
old friends avert their gaze—every cough an accusation, every fever a curse,
Nurses paint prayers in latex, hands trembling as they lift bodies
like glass, knowing kindness is now what kills, the future unrehearsed,
Somewhere a mother is screaming, locked in a classroom turned isolation ward,
voice cracking for a child she won’t see again,
Priests say last rites from behind barricades, holy water splashed on rubber gloves,
even God is masked, and the angels have washed their hands of men,
The gravediggers learn to read faces, to recognize when fear hardens to blame,
they work by moonlight—no hymns, just a shovel and the taste of dread,
Children learn to play alone, passing time in silence,
memories quarantined along with the living, no bedtime stories, just empty beds.
Water buckets stand sentry at every door,
soapy hands scrubbed raw until the skin forgets how to feel,
The sick call out from windows, only to echo off cracked walls —
suffering has become routine, grief a wound that won’t heal,
Every village has a hero and every hero is shunned,
remembered only in whispers, as if kindness carried the taint,
We bury hope in shallow graves, dreams sealed behind warnings,
every phone call another tally, every tear drop a saint
Lost to invisible contagion, to distrust thicker than fever,
the living envying the ones who don’t wake,
A thousand prayers rot in the mouths of the faithful,
and the blue tents sag with the weight of a promise nobody was strong enough to make.
After the last burial, the birds return, puzzled by the hush,
perching on rooftops with no audience for their song,
A nurse unzips her suit, pours bleach on her shoes,
and weeps for the village that called her a hero until the news got it wrong,
Outbreaks pass but the scars remain, a village unlearns how to gather,
how to greet, how to trust the taste of a lover’s hand,
Generations erased in a month, tradition collapsed into silence,
ancestors denied their goodbyes, everything lost to the memory of a van.
You won’t find hope here, just the memory of hope: a prayer hung on a doorknob,
a child’s doll left in the grass,
Even the wind seems to whisper,
“Who will speak for the ones who never had a chance?”
When the sun sets on the empty streets, only the crows call the roll,
And the story of the lost is a fever that lingers,
a sorrow too stubborn to let go.
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