Postcards from the Plague
Tape hiss at dawn, a message faint—“Just checking in… Are you still there?”No hands reached back across the
gap, no voice to haunt the empty air.She traced “I miss
your laugh” in trembling script, a half-erased refrain,
The kind of note that outlives flesh and curls
like shadow under rain.He coughed behind the plexiglass,
his body blurred by sterile screens,
The world’s compassion came in waves, then vanished,
buried in routines.Windows closed, the city stilled,
sirens faded to static haze,
Each sunrise duller than the last,
the living learning not to gaze.News anchors smiled above the crawl,
streets emptied into silent zones,
We worshipped every little ping, but left the sick to die alone.
I saved the post—her face still bright, a digital bouquet of hope,
The caption’s date now darker ink, a memory scrawled in isotope.He texted jokes,
then faded slow, his timeline slipped to archive’s hold,
A viral feed, a trending tag,
a hunger for connection cold.They vanished in fluorescent rooms,
behind the breathless ventilators’ whine,
And every hashtag built a tomb,
more echo than a warning sign.Their avatars smiled in frozen light,
their words dissolving line by line,
Each memory scrolls through fever dreams, but none return, or give a sign.
Postcards from the plague: a thousand names the census missed,
A laugh remembered, unreturned,
a friendship lost in digital mist.A child’s last wish through plexiglass,
an old man’s prayer to empty beds,
They wore their best for farewell screens,
their hands replaced by static threads.Our rituals became the feed,
our mourning rituals staged and brief,
While ghosts grew fat on double-taps,
and grief found solace in disbelief.We kept our jobs, we washed our hands,
we clung to screens like ritual bread,
We passed the days, the weeks, the months—alive,
but dreaming of the dead.Their selfies aged to pale ghosts,
their jokes a thread we never read.
The machine remembers every plea, each archived cry, each sigh unheard,
A stream of loss beneath the news, a history stripped of gesture,
word.They begged through masks, through cough and code,
We watched, we scrolled, but never slowed.They died unseen
while laughter faked its stay—We counted numbers, prayed the plague away.Unread,
unseen, their postcards pile in haunted mail,
We saved their faces, sold their pain,
but never heard the tale.Now guilt arrives—an empty ping,
a question no reply can mend,
The plague wrote home, but all that lingers now is shameAnd messages
that never send.