Tick tock. Tick tock. The clock is unmercifully vocal
Has it been seconds, minutes, hours or a few days?
Time was a familiar old friend of mine, you see
It goes beyond these winding hallways,
Of gossamer-walled wards that conceal immense despair.
Echoing footsteps resound against linoleum flooring,
the melancholy hum of an oxygen tank serenades me
and I hear a paroxysmal cough, then labored breathing.
Tick tock. Tick tock. Pages from the bedside book flutter-
A story of men in masks and corpses in caskets,
A dystopia of deserted roads and desolate homes
But the fable alchemizes to reality: now a looming threat.
I look away, fatigued, and face the flickering screen
The newslady seems to speak in numbers and statistics
Numbers that once were ‘you’ and ‘me’. They were.
The pandemonium of the television fades into static.
Tick tock. Tick tock. I drown in the blur of white noise-
The wail of a lamenting spouse, a befuddled daughter.
A veiled stretcher rolls by and I send my silent condolences-
The fruit of the pandemic’s unprejudiced slaughter,
the butterfly effect of something infinitesimal-
The pager rings and that concludes my break.
The clock ticks mockingly as I leave to fight; to fight
the tenacious virus that the world can’t seem to shake.
A poem by Lee.
