Pestilence

Pestilence docked its ships

on our open lips and fingertips,

covered our smiles with cloth strips.

We sipped on broths of turmeric and limes.

we supped on exotic bread, and some on misty air,

with payless shifts and wailing nights,

gurgling stomachs and dwindling sights,

cough and a call away from lonely wards.

Empty roads screamed you are our heroes,

empty words for when they're just bodies in rows,

will our sympathy spark Lazarus' heart?

show of hands, yellow buttons of ones and zeroes,

show of faces, I am distorted, distraught at the silence,

from my mind and mouth, from the mime made out of a play,

all the words are static and all of the world's at my attic,

closed in a cardboard box, to not open for years.

closed in a room, the strip on my face drenched in tears,

out the window, I look into the box in my attic,

with every stranger I pass, I reach into the box.

it seals tighter the more I reach,

so I cuff myself to my bed before my hand reaches

the box again, clutch at my lungs and

watch the sky turn from the color of peaches to muted greys,

watch the lights and the changing moons,

watch if I am muted in a million different zooms,

watch my own face as it wails and screeches,

bloats and bleaches and slowly forgets

a hundred places it once held dear.