Whenever my online classes end, so do human lives. They cry in languageless agony.
But thousands of miles away, I’m deaf. The news is my hearing aid.
Maybe the news glitched, because it’s on a loop: COVID-19. COVID. The virus which won’t be named.
The fancy-sounding variants. India.
I scroll through before crashing into paywalls. But the little snippet reads about
overfilled hospitals. Crowds. Infection Rates. Rampant spread.
Flip to another story; it's still there. I’ll read about the horrors: their frail hands
clasping each other with a vicious panic. The colorful saris and kurtas fall prey
to worn, graying faces. I won’t look too closely; they might be the friends of family,
or that jolly neighbor, or the one guy down the street; they might be the cousins
I awkwardly tried to chat up in broken Hindi, the one aunty who gave me birthday money; or the uncle who went
bowling with old coconuts.
I’ll pause, skimming over the fight for tanked oxygen. I’ll hear the panicked hack hak hagh coughs. I’ll look over at
the houseplant I keep around for color. Science class say it
pumps out oxygen steadily, but it isn’t enough.
So I’ll take a breath while I can.
