War At Peace

Did anyone cheat death on behalf of the world?
Whites died, Blacks didn't survive either,
The rich men abandoned their wealth,
Unwillingly, yet not given a choice,
The poor ones still had no chance of looting,
Poverty didn't mean immunity, I wasn't immune,
This is the tale of a disheartening journey,
One that starts with as little as a cough,
And ended, if unlucky, about a week later,
Not better, not same, rather dead in a mass cemetery.
We were warned to wash our hands,
But as much as we did, we couldn't wash away the vulnerability engraved in our palms.
We wore nose masks but they didn't mask our fears,
Leaders emerged from all works of life,
Armoured with positivity, wearing lipsticks of optimism,
Either way, all I saw was a battle in their eyes,
Fighting off bitterness, displaying the last bit of resilience in their depleted souls.
All I heard was the nothing-can-be-done beating of their hearts,
The kind of panic you feel when a gun is pointed to your brain,
All I felt was uncertainty suffocating the little life left in a body I believed was healthy.
Familiarity declining into social distancing, the two metre rule,
Victims accepted vaccines, not minding its efficacy,
Perhaps the burden and weight of languish pulled their hearts,
And made breathing even more difficult than should be,
Some were left at the mercy of the hands of death,
Allowing the air of pity linger around them,
Their lives being slowly sipped out like coconut juice,
Others are only spared an hour or two to lament,
Before they join the toll of deaths, even without recognition by name,
Yet many had gone, no chance to even write a proper will,
No number of minutes of silence could pay enough respect to the lives lost,
COVID 19 brought hardship, hunger, insecurity, curfew, even brutality,
Our lives were on hold and no one was doing anything,
Not because we chose not to do anything,
But rather because we could not do anything.
Normalcy had come to an abrupt stop,
We knew we were drowning in the waves of the pandemic,
Yet we hoped there was a life guard, a life jacket somewhere,
We chose to hope that we would survive,
That was the least we could do,
I survived.