2020

2020 is a weeping memory in my heart
2020 is a sobbing stain in my clothes
Learning what creases the souls and films a deadly day
Watching how bodies in the graves are crowded
how bodies burned in the pyre, ashes and ashes

2020 feels like an injury in my body
2020 feels like a wound that bleeds
The invisible thorns that pricked the bodies were not greenish
Hanging on the deadly branches
They were rather like a Jinn
or a polluted gene
That stealth into bodies
Sickened them, 
Quarantined them
and then, no words but death...

I did not find the ship anywhere which came to the ancient mariner
I did not find the mariner who sucked his blood and cried, "A sail, a sail"
What I saw was that the dance of life turned into the dance of death
till the snakes, greenish and yellowish, float over the water
His parched heart filled with love and care

I don't know what was good: life or death?
I don't know what I craved: life or death?
I only knew that
When death comes to suck the life, still, keep loving
Keep caring for the creatures of the world.

The creatures that hurt us all throughout our lives
The world which tests us at all turns of our lives...

Umme Salma, Toowong,