When a woman in my province went
to wave at her Mom through a window,
staff at the care home
pulled the blind down in her face.
I’ve never been to India,
where the woman from the article stood
over her father’s corpse in the parking lot
turned crematory and said:
It’s like one of those movies
in which the world has been attacked
and there are bodies everywhere.
Yes, I thought, that’s what it’s like.
Though I was just looking
at my wall.
A Scarborough teen recently died of Covid at home.
An Albertan teen died from it in hospital.
When they finally told us about the BC baby
who’d died of Covid months ago,
health officials were sure to point out
the infant’s underlying health conditions –
and I don’t understand.
Is that not eugenics?
Never have I lived a world
I’ve had so little experience of.
People online keep saying
we only have each other
and I think: yes, but also.
I’m alive precisely
because of my distance
from the dead. My life, a flame
I’ve been told never to quench,
best lived now at arm’s length
from everyone.