Death in the time of COVID-19

COVID-19 has impacted societies in many different ways. Rubana Islam’s poem considers those affected and questions what dying in the time of COVID means.

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Raspy lungs and laboured breath 

Are these my last ones? 

There was a time when mum’s chicken soup 

Would heal the sniffles and coughs 

And shoo away the flu. 

But not this time. 

This time the virus is stronger than the sun’s ray 

Experts say. 

Not allowed to go to the mountains to wallow 

Nor to go near the ocean to be swallowed 

I am to be bounded in the four walls  

Of a room that’s hollow 

Where comes no man, no child, not even my soul 

A mahogany cockroach is my only comrade 

Molting, peering down at me, dreading 

A prophet to the putrefaction impending.  

Once I take my leave 

How will you remember me? 

A daughter who promised to make your old age more bearable 

A girl with a weird laugh, snorts punctuating 

A friend lending an ear to your existential crisis 

A stranger who smiled at you across the street on a cloudy day  

A hopeful girlfriend searching secrets in your piercing blue iris  

The tenant who paid rent on time  

Until the virus gnawed away her living 

And burrowed a home of its own in her chest of clay.  

When I succumb to the fight that breathing has become  

Will you come to my funeral? 

And say a eulogy in my name 

Or will I be just a body virus laden  

Untouchable? 

Unclean? 

Just another statistic in this pandemic. 

My epitaph will read.